Agnes Grey: ‘all true histories contain instruction’

Abstract

Agnes Grey tells a story of female development. What makes it distinctive from previous novels by women with female protagonists is that Agnes more closely follows a male pattern of development. The classic starting point for the male Bildungsroman, or novel of development, is the protagonist’s dissatisfaction with home and a corollary desire to gain experience in the larger world. While Agnes cannot simply take to the open road like a male hero, she nonetheless longs ‘to see a little more of the world’ (AG 4). She resists being kept the ‘child and the pet of the family... too helpless and dependent — too unfit for buffeting with the cares and turmoils of life’ (AG 4). She wants ‘To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to exercise my unused faculties; to try my unknown powers; to earn my own maintenance...’ (AG 10). Anne’s sounding of these aims heralds the arrival of a heroine new to fiction, one to whom, as we have seen, Charlotte owes a major debt.