Agnes Grey (33 page)

1
(p. 153)
Being too late for the last coach... rugged hills:
Each conveyance is more primitive than the last.

1
(p. 155)
“will you be willing to leave your present situation and try?”:
The Brontë sisters had planned to open such a school; theirs, however, was a complete failure.

1
(p. 158) A—,
the fashionable watering place:
This is a reference to a vacation spot modeled on Scarborough, a popular Yorkshire resort on the North Sea where Anne Brontë spent pleasant summer holidays with the Robinsons (see “Introduction” for Anne’s relationship with this family) and also where she went to die.

1
(p. 167)
“my reward shall be hereafter”:
This is a key moment in Agnes’s moral progress: She must give up happiness as a goal in life, instead accepting her Christian duty to minister to the needs of others.

1
(p. 172)
“but rather... dine with us occasionally”:
Rosalie clearly is embarrassed that her guests will see her old governess. Agnes takes the hint and generously offers to take her meals alone.

1
(p. 179)
“Harry Meltham whose shoes he was not worthy to clean ”:
This is possibly an allusion to several biblical texts, including Matthew 3:11. Rosalie in effect confesses that she loved Harry but married Sir Thomas for his money and position. Rosalie’s moral bankruptcy is signaled by her inability to recognize that she has done anything improper by continuing to meet and flirt with Harry.

1
(p. 182)
It was delightful... Summer morning:
Agnes seems to share fully Anne Brontë’s great love for Scarborough.

2
(p. 184)
a gold one now:
Mr. Weston can afford his own gold watch.

3
(p. 185)
“the living of F—
”: Mr. Weston sports that gold watch now because his income has risen with his professional situation; no longer Mr. Hatfield’s curate, he has his own parish in an adjoining village.

1
(p. 190)
he seemed greatly ... and so did I:
Agnes is being rather coy here—no gentleman would address an unrelated female acquaintance by her given name unless he were, in effect, accepted by her as her suitor.

1
(p. 197)
The book was printed: Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
appeared in May of 1846. Printed at the sisters’ expense, the volume sold only two copies.

2
(p. 198)
One zuriter:
The critic Sydney Dobell published a favorable review in September of 1850—that is, after Emily’s death

3
(p. 199)
“This is the interpretation thereof”:
Charlotte alludes to a story in the Book of Daniel in which “writing on the wall” appears before King Belshazzar. When “the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers” Belshazzar summons to “shew [him] the interpretation thereof” (5:7) fail to do so, Daniel is brought before the King. He translates and interprets the Aramaic words, stating: “This is the interpretation of the thing. MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians” (5:26-28).

4
(p. 199)
terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused:
Charlotte refers to her brother, Branwell Brontë, who showed great promise as a young man but was given to dissipation. He died of alcohol and drug poisoning in September 1848, at the age of thirty-one.

5
(p. 200)
very heat and burden of the day:
This is an allusion to laborers who “have borne the burden and heat of the day” (Matthew 20:12).

6
(p. 202)
Neither Emily norAnne was learned:
Emily was, in fact, very learned. Like her siblings, she had access from childhood to a wide variety of books and periodicals, which she absorbed. Besides acquiring a knowledge of French and German, she was also well versed in both Latin and Greek, as well as in classical literature—those learned fields that were predominantly the purview of men at the time. M. Heger, the director of the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels, where Emily and Charlotte studied in 1842, characterized Emily as having “‘a head for logic, and a capability of argument, unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a woman’” (quoted in Barker,
The Brontës,
p. 392; see “For Further Reading”).

Anne Brontë was overshadowed by the legend and genius of her two sisters since before she died young of consumption. It has become commonplace to relegate her to a quaint corner of English letters, to give her the benefit of her last name. But many critics advocate for Anne, whose writing, they feel, has been denied serious consideration for too long. Lucasta Miller, in her 2001 book
The Brontë Myth
(see “For Further Reading”), argues that
Agnes Grey
and
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,
though much more restrained in tone and conventional in storytelling mode than her sisters’ novels, are the most socially progressive of the Brontë’s literary output. Anne’s sisters excelled at pouring brutal passions onto the page, thereby inspiring scandal, the cutting remarks of critics, large book sales—in short, the lion’s share of the public’s esteem of the Brontë clan.

The tendency to overlook the youngest Brontë in all likelihood began with her sister Charlotte, who ran the Haworth parsonage with the well-intentioned but severe aspect of a governess. In her “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell” (see Appendix) Charlotte struggles to make sense of her quiet sister: “[Anne’s] was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind; it did her harm” (p. 199). And again, when comparing her to Charlotte’s more beloved sister, Emily:

Charlotte is most dismissive of her sister when discussing Anne’s second novel,
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
“The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer’s nature could be conceived” (p. 199). This undervaluation of
The Tenant,
which is at odds with its much more favorable critical reception, suggests that Charlotte may not have known or understood her youngest sister as well as she thought she did.

Besides her novels
Agnes Grey
and
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,
each of which contains a single poem, Anne Brontë is remembered primarily for her verse. Following the 1846 publication of
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
—which sold only two copies—the 1850, or second, edition of
Wuthering Heights
and
Agnes Grey
included a selection of Anne’s poetry, edited by Charlotte. There are a total of fifty-four extant poems by Anne Brontë; twenty-four of them were published during her lifetime. The publication of these verses in various magazines instilled in Anne a pride uncharacteristic of her usually reserved disposition. In many ways poetry was the most natural expression of her elegiac view of love, her deep-seated piety, and her quiet resignation, as well as her devotion to English religious poet William Cowper (1731-1800), to whom she dedicated some of her poems.

For better or worse, the versions of Anne’s poems most easily available are those altered by Charlotte. (The same is true of Emily Brontë’s powerful verses.) In her family biography The
Brontës
(1995), Juliet Barker judges Charlotte harshly for her editorial approach to her sisters’ work: “It was on par with her many attempts to organize them during their lives. Nevertheless, Charlotte clearly believed that she was performing her ‘sacred duty’ in her self-appointed role as her sisters’ interpreter to the world and the task had not been pleasant.” Be that as it may, it is in her verses that Anne Brontë’s character—one resigned to death and isolation—begins to emerge. In a poem titled “Appeal” (originally “Lines Written at Thorp Green”; 1841), Anne appears to court death as she would a lover:

Anne’s most famous poem may have been her last. Called by Charlotte “Last Lines,” the poem became a standard hymn in many churches throughout England. Written a few weeks after Emily’s death and a few months before her own, the poem completes a well-known Brontë anecdote: When asked what she most wanted, the four-year-old Anne replied, “Age and experience.” Within a relatively short time, she had had all the experience she wanted: