While Charlotte s Jane Eyre features a governess who eventually and improbably marries her employer, Agnes Grey deals with the actual experiences of middle class working women, experiences Anne had herself endured during her hateful tenure as a governess.įred Schwarzbach serves as Associate Dean and teaches in the General Studies Program of New York University. Less celebrated than her older sisters Charlotte and Emily, Anne Bronte was also less interested in spinning wildly symbolic, romantic tales and more determined to draw realistic images of conditions in Victorian England that need changing. Worse, the unique social and economic position of a governess beneath her employers but above their servants condemns her to a life of loneliness. At the Bloomfields and later the Murrays, she suffers under the snobbery and sadism of the selfish, self indulgent upper class adults and the shrieking insolence of their spoiled children. Pampered and protected at home, she is unprepared for the harsh reality of a governess’s life. Agnes comes from a respectable middle class family, but their financial reverses have forced her to seek work as a governess. Written when women and workers generally had few rights in England, Agnes Grey exposes the brutal inequities of the rigid class system in mid nineteenth century Britain. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences biographical, historical, and literary to enrich each reader’s understanding of these enduring works. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today’s top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader’s viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications some include illustrations of historical interest. Agnes Grey, by Anne Bronte, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classicsseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras.

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