At age 19 Anne Brontë left home and worked as a governess for a few years before becoming a writer. Agnes Grey was an 1847 novel based on her experience as a governess. Bronte depicts the precarious position of a governess and how that can affect a young woman. Agnes was the daughter of a minister whose family was in financial difficulty. She has only a few choices for employment. Agnes experiences the difficulty of reining in spoiled children and how wealth can corrupt morals.

For your wishlist

I received this wishlist book from Deepswamp today. Thank you so much for sharing this one! :)

Okay... well, I'm not sorry that I read this one but I confess that I did not enjoy it as much as I'd hoped. I found that I could not relate well to the main character, Agnes Grey. She struck me as self-righteous, bitter, and somewhat gloomy. I simply didn't find her to be a sympathetic and likable heroine.

The writing style was also not what I was expecting. Anne Bronte did a lot of "telling" versus "showing." The narrative was often summarized instead of playing out on the page. There was little description, which is regrettable, because I felt that some of the strongest passages in the novel were the few descriptions of landscapes and the natural world that were included.

A classic, but not my favorite piece of Victorian fiction by any means.

Reserving for the General Literature VBB.

Description from Amazon:

"In her daring first novel, the youngest Brontë sister drew upon her own experiences to tell the unvarnished truth about life as a governess. Like Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë was a young middle-class Victorian lady whose family fortunes had faltered. Like so many other unmarried women of the nineteenth century, Brontë accepted the only 'respectable' employment available--and entered a world of hardship, humiliation, and loneliness.

Written with a realism that shocked critics, this biting social commentary offers a sympathetic portrait of Agnes and a moving indictment of her brutish and haughty employers. Separated from her family and friends by many miles, paid little more than subsistence wages, Agnes stands alone--both in society at large and in a household where she is neither family member nor servant. Agnes Grey remains a landmark in the literature of social history. In addition to its challenge to the era's chauvinism and materialism, it features a first-person narrative that offers a rare opportunity to hear the voice of a Victorian working woman."

The VBB is no longer running, so I am making this one available.

I hope the finder enjoys the book!