Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey
The Bronte Heroine Enters a Journey of Womanhood as a Governess
Agnes' decision to leave home and become a governess is part of the theme of female identity in question in Victorian Literature.
Anne Bronte's protagonist Agnes in Agnes Grey leaves her family at the tender age of eighteen in order to become a governess, or, a modern day nanny. As part of the process of attaining social and economic independence, the separation from her family's ability to influence her decision is necessary in order to develop her own identity as a governess. Agnes narrates: "Though a woman in my own estimation, I was still a child in theirs. (Agnes Grey 6) Doubting Agnes's potential to sustain an independent life, her mother says: "But, my love, you have not learned to take care of yourself yet: and young children require more judgment and experience to manage than elder ones." (Agnes Grey 7)
As a governess for the Bloomfield children, Agnes works under difficult conditions, which mainly consist of a lack of respect between employer and employee and understands then and there, what being a governess is really all about. Forced to cope with personal isolation, Agnes begins by reaching out to God as her divine source of inspiration. Agnes's employers constantly criticize her ability to function as a governess, yet Agnes remains "confident that she will be able to alter the [Bloomfield] children's personalities and reform their characters" (Frawley 94). Despite her failures, Agnes maintains self-control in times of difficulty. She says: "I thought, if I could struggle on with unremitting firmness and integrity, the children would in time become more humanized" (Agnes Grey 27).
The abjection Agnes feels in the Bloomfield household, results in her increasing opportunities for seeking a sense of self and begins a journey for understanding who she is. It is as if she wants to prove something to her family and the female community in particular, in showing how her independence is reflective of her self-awareness. Agnes understands that "[family's] pattern[s] of thought - patterns that [initially] den[ied] her an independence [which] result in her seeing hserlf as somehow less fully developed and able to act on her own" (Frawley 91).
Through a deeper introspection and regulation of her behavior, Agnes establishes the self-esteem sufficient to challenge the turbulent forces of the public world. This drive to define her own independent self can be seen in the following quote:
I longed to show my friends that, even now, I was competent to understand the charge, and able to acquit myself honourably to the end; and if ever i felt it degrading to submit so quietly, or intolerable to toil so constantly, I would turn towards my home, and say within myself-they may crush, but they shall not subdue me! 'Tis of thee that I think, not of them. (Agnes Grey 27-28)
Works Cited
Bronte, Anne. Agnes Grey. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1982.
Frawley Maria. Anne Bronte. Ed. Herbert Sussman. Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, 1996.
