#agnes grey
BOOK REVIEW: Agnes Grey (1847) by Anne Brontë
This book is about a young woman who decides to become a governess and finds the job a lot tougher than she had anticipated. The children refuse to listen to her, their parents blame her for their offspring’s terrible behaviour, and she finds herself increasingly frustrated by the thanklessness of her work.
I’m the same age now as Anne Brontë was when she wrote this book and as an English teacher recovering from a burnout while reading this book, a lot of Agnes’s troubles hit home for me. Some struggles are timeless, it seems.
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“No, thank you, I don’t mind the rain,’ I said. I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.”
Libro:Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Have you ever wanted to know more about your favorite classic authors? Each month, we share various facts about the lives and works of our Author of the Month.
During January, we honored Anne Brontë as our Author of the Month to tie in with the bicentenary of Brontë’s birth. Anne was born on January 17th 1820 in Yorkshire and some of the most interesting things we learned about her this month were…
- Anne is the youngest sibling and was known to be the most delicate of all the Brontë children, and after the death of her eldest sisters she was educated at home rather than at Cowan Bridge with Emily and Charlotte.
- In 1839, Anne Brontë began work as a governess for the Ingham family. This experience influenced Anne to write her first novel, ‘Agnes Grey,’ which described the experience of being a governess as being a miserable one–spending all day with spoiled children she was forbidden to punish.
- In 1845, Charlotte discovered a manuscript of Emily’s poems and made it her mission to publish a collection of the sisters’ poetry. By May 1846, at the sisters’ expense, a collection of the poems of 'Curer, Ellis, and Acton Bell’ was published.
- After Branwell Brontë’s death on 24 September 1848 and Emily’s on 19 December, symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis became evident in Anne’s declining health. Charlotte took her to the sea to recover, and it was there Anne Brontë died on 28 May 1849 at their lodging at 2 St Nicholas Cliff, Scarborough—with almost her last breath saying she was happy, and thanking God that 'death was come, and come so gently.’
For the month of February, we are exploring the life and work of Victor Hugo. Be sure to follow the #ClassicsInContext hashtag on TwitterandFacebook to learn more!
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