Weston at last does reappear (hardly an accident, since he has been searching for her for months) and offers his proposal of marriage (properly speaking with Mrs. Grey before he even approaches Agnes on the subject), the atmosphere is reminiscent of Mr. Knightley’s proposal to Jane Austen’s Emma—we know as he speaks that he has long been in love with her, but he must be tested by being obliged to wait until the right moment to speak. And, just as Mr. Knightley says that when he feels deeply he must speak plainly, Mr. Weston engages in no sentimental repartee with his intended: “‘You love me then?’ said he, fervently pressing my hand. ‘Yes’” (p. 192). Agnes says afterward, as she remembers this moment, that their “hearts filled with gratitude to Heaven, and happiness, and love.” The order here is significant—first, God, who should be everyone’s first concern; then happiness, available to any individual (as it was to Agnes) who serves God; and finally, the loving union of two of God’s servants.
Within a few more pages the novel is over, readers granted only a short sketch of the productive (it is that, rather than happy) life of the pair, now married and with children of their own. This established, few novels have concluded with so quiet a statement as this: “And now I think I have said sufficient.” But if the reader has been attending to the Christian message that underpins Anne’s narrative throughout the novel, this is indeed sufficient, for the rest of her story will be one of quiet dedication to her domestic circle, her husband, her family, and her parish.
The modern secular reader, perhaps in the wake of William Empson’s rewriting (in Milton’s God, 1961) of Paradise Lost as a tale of sympathy for the devil, prefers religious novels to embrace doubt, disbelief, and disharmony; loss of faith is the inevitable outcome of struggle. In sharp contrast, we have in Agnes Grey a novel in which faith triumphs, and it does so not by separating itself from everyday concerns, but by immersing itself fully in them. Its great success is to discover the sacred in the everyday, thus remaining loyal to both the divine and the human. To the modern reader, this simple message may smack of religiosity, yet to at least some of Anne Brontë’s contemporary Victorian audience, such abiding faith would have rung true. Agnes and Mr. Weston seal their faith and their love in a marriage that signals the promise not only of individual happiness, but also of hope for the redemption of the whole community. It is a sign of Brontë’s quiet power in the novel that even in our secular age we can share in their joy.
Fred Schwarzbach serves as Associate Dean and teaches in the General Studies Program of New York University. He is the author of Dickens and the City, the editor of Victorian Artists and the City and Dickens’s American Notes, a contributor to the Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens, and the author of scores of articles, essays, and reviews on Victorian life and letters.
NOTE
1. The standard format for the publication of new fiction from the 1820s to around 1890 was the “three-decker,” three octavo volumes published at the set price of 31 shillings sixpence (one and one-half guineas); since the Brontës’ works separately were too short to fill the format, they sensibly proposed combining them. Anne and Emily also subsidized the publication in return for a share of profits, a fairly standard arrangement for unknown authors’ first books. They later suspected that Newby cheated them of their profits, which was very likely true.
A Note on the Text
This edition of Agnes Grey is based upon the first edition—published by Thomas Cautley Newby—about which some comment is necessary. No manuscript of the novel survives; typically, Victorian printers divided up the manuscript of a book among various compositors and after typesetting it was discarded or used as waste paper. (Only for a famous author like Dickens was more care exercised, and probably because Dickens wanted the manuscript returned to him.) Newby was notoriously careless, and Charlotte refers in a letter to numerous corrections made by Emily and Anne to proof sheets that were not reflected in the published text. Newby’s text certainly has a number of idiosyncratic features: In addition to obvious errors, some spellings are unconventional; and punctuation is very odd, with many commas in places where they are unnecessary or confusing, and no commas in places where they clearly ought to be. (However, the unusual use of commas in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, set by a different printer, suggests that the compositors may have been following the author’s practice here.) The second edition of Agnes Grey was published and corrected in 1850 by Charlotte after Anne’s death, with no evidence that she was following her sister’s suggestions. (See the Appendix [pages 195-202] for a “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell” that was included in this second edition.) However, there is a copy of Agnes Grey in the Princeton University Library that contains 121 corrections in Anne’s hand, perhaps a first thought toward a second edition. Unfortunately, these are unsystematic and do not seem to have resulted from a careful and thorough reading of the text and correction of its errors. Thus it appears that the first edition is as close as we are likely to get to Anne’s intentions, and it remains, with all its imperfections, the best available copy text.
CHAPTER I
The Parsonage
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge; I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others, but the world may judge for itself: shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture, and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.1
My father was a clergyman of the north of England, who was deservedly respected by all who knew him, and, in his younger days, lived pretty comfortably on the joint income of a small incumbency, and a snug little property of his own. My mother, who married him against the wishes of her friends, was a squire’s daughter, and a woman of spirit. In vain it was represented to her that, if she became the poor parson’s wife, she must relinquish her carriage and her lady‘s-maid, and all the luxuries and elegancies of affluence, which to her were little less than the necessaries of life.
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