Where Agnes Grey Makes the Best of It

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very straightforward story, and I enjoyed it. It's probably something under 80,000 words, which is pleasantly brief for a classic novel, and has an imperfect but likable main character.

Is it a spoiler to indicate it has a happy ending? If it is, I won't mention it.

Agnes finds herself in the position, as an educated young woman, of needing to earn some money for herself, and save her parents the expense of taking care of her. She's a bit genteel, so she's coming down in the world, but the people she works for see her only as a servant.

The first people she works for are horrible. (She won't let the small boy torture baby birds, and the mom is mad about it.) The second family, where she stays quite a bit longer, is better, but still obnoxious. The main idea of the whole family (focusing on the marriage-eligible daughters) is this: I've got money, and I want to still have money later, so I will never improve myself, and I will never worry about anyone else, and I will make terrible decisions all to preserve my access to money, and then... I will sure be sad about it.

But Agnes is different. She tries really hard to do the right thing, and never answer back, and have respect for people who don't deserve it, and do her duty all of the time, all without hoping for anything to work out any better than her crappy present--although, secretly, she does hope. And maybe it does work out... And some say she's just too good, but I don't see it that way. She's a bit of a doormat (though she was *sort of* expected to be) and never explains anything and never fights back and never says what she actually wants to anyone, so much so that she almost blows it. She's such a good girl, so moral, so humble, that she is almost invisible. The guy she loves talks to her, demonstrating interest, and she responds with such dull, disinterested nothings that one would think that she was trying to get rid of him. Smile, girl! Say you're happy to see him! Sheesh! Elinor Dashwood looks like a flirt compared to you...

But he's a good guy, her secret love, and he sees through it all. Good thing, too.

I connected most near the beginning when she is trying to get badly behaved little kids to do what she wants, but the parents do not give her any authority or means to manage them, no punishments or rewards, and all she has is the force of her personality--which the kids don't care about at all. She could reason with them, plead, shout, grow angry, get upset, whatever, and they don't care.

Every teacher ever feels this.

The novel says a lot about the lives of women in England (and many other countries) at that time and since. Make the best of it, the novel says. Do your duty. Hope for the best--but don't hope too much. Still, who knows what might happen? And if, as is most likely, nothing good ever happens--still make the best of it. You'll be rewarded, I guess? (She's pretty churchy.)

I feel like we can do better for people. Nobody should feel like they have to keep their eyes down and their mouth permanently shut.

Anyway, it works out. (Spoiler! Dang it.) Enjoyable novel. Not as much angst as other Brontë novels, but maybe that's a good thing. I recommend it.

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