Reading the Classics: Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë

My favorite of the Brontes is Anne. This is my favorite of her novels.

In this and Jane Eyre, we have governess-eye views of the gentry. In Jane Eyre, Jane manages to make herself central (her suffering in being a governess); in Agnes Grey, there is a meticulous look at the thin veneer of civilization over the soi-disant gentry who have all the money and manner but utterly no moral center. The examination of this family is one of the most effective pieces of quiet horror in literature, I think, because it resonates as true. Far more effective than Charlotte’s madwoman-in-the-attic histrionics. (Though those, too, smack of reality . . . but not a reality known to Charlotte. I attribute the long habit of Byronic fanfiction for that, as well as for Emily’s oeuvre, and Anne’s own Tenant)

Rereading for a book group: again, it strikes me how very good Anne was at observations of human behavior, though a sense of Anne is difficult to find. Agnes Grey is nearly invisible, quite a contrast to Charlotte’s books, which convey a powerful sense of Charlotte front and center. (And Emily was different from both, writing straight from the id vortex)