Written when she was twenty-six, Agnes Grey is Anne Brontë’s first novel. It tells the story of a rector’s daughter who has to earn her living as a governess when her family enters a financial crisis. Drawing directly from her own experiences, Anne Brontë set out to describe the immense pressures that the governess’ life involved: the frustration, the isolation, and the insensitive and cruel treatment on the part of employers and their families.
Mature, insightful, and edged with a quiet irony, this debut displays a keen sense of moral responsibility and sharp eye for bourgeois attitudes and behavior—and the corrosive power of wealth.
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[McCaddon] makes the young protagonist come to life in her nuanced first-person reading; her crisp and educated voice conveying the narrator’s energy and persistent optimism, while renderings of Agnes’ masters, mistresses, and young charges show them for the uncouth bullies that they actually are, despite their superior airs and flaunted gentility.
—
Kliatt