65 pages • 2 hours read
Agnes Grey
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Further Reading & Resources
Further Reading: Literature
Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë
The only novel by the middle Brontë sister draws deeply on veins of Romantic and Gothic literature to tell the story of the passionate attachment between young Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff, an orphan her family adopted, and the impact their love has on their families. The novel explores themes of romantic love and social restrictions with a very different approach than that of Agnes Grey.
- Wuthering Heights on SuperSummary
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte’s first novel follows the trials of the young orphan Jane Eyre as she grows up, becomes a governess, and experiences love and loss. Published before Agnes Grey, the book led some critics to read Anne’s book as an imitation. The novels by all three Brontë sisters explore the position of the young, unmarried woman in Victorian society and share similarities in writing style and sensibility while still being widely different, and all are considered classics in their own right.
- Jane Eyre on SuperSummary
Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal: Selected Writings (2010) by the Brontës
This collection presents the surviving juvenilia of all four Brontë siblings, with extensive notes and introductions. While Charlotte and Branwell collaborated most intensely on their imagined worlds of Angria and Glass Town, Emily and Anne invented the land of Gondal and created a lively history. Anne’s poems, mostly short lyrics, capture moments in her characters’ lives in language and tone that parallels her later novels.
Further Reading: Beyond Literature (Nonfiction)
Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (1987) by Nancy Armstrong
Armstrong’s work draws on several genres of British literature from the 19th and early 20th centuries to argue that such works helped shape and support Victorian ideals about feminine roles and domesticity in women’s day-to-day lives. Armstrong’s study represents a new, feminist strand of academic study that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s that paid closer attention to the role of women in literature as authors, readers, and characters.
The Victorian Governess (1993) by Kathryn Hughes
Historian Hughes draws on diaries, letters, and other primary sources to illustrate what life was like for governesses in Victorian England between 1840 and 1880. Hughes provides a more realistic insight into the governess’s position than the portrayals in literature. Hughes offers a condensed discussion of her key points in an online article for the British Library.
“Domestic Novel” (2010) by Lori Merish
This chapter in The Encyclopedia of the Novel (2010) describes the characteristics and key concerns of the domestic novel, as well as the works of major authors who contributed to the genre. This abstract of the chapter touches on the novel’s key concerns of domesticity, its connection to women’s authorship, and its role in delineating feminine gender roles and middle-class morality.
Video & Podcast Resources
“Agnes Grey Dramatic Reading” (2012) by LibriVox
LibriVox hosts audiobooks for public domain works, including this dramatic reading of Agnes Grey, which features a full cast.
To Walk Invisible: The Lives of the Brontë Sisters (2016) by Sally Wainwright
This television film about the Brontës debuted on the BBC in 2016. Written and directed by Sally Wainwright, the film traces the Brontë sisters’ rise to literary acclaim while exploring the family’s dynamics, particularly the relationships between Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and their brother, Branwell.
Other Relevant Media Resources
Hosted by the Brontë Society, the Brontë Parsonage Museum maintains an extensive collection of letters, manuscripts, and early drafts of novels and poems written by the Brontës, in addition to other resources about the family and their work. Readers may be especially interested in this overview of the Brontës and Haworth, the town where the sisters wrote most of their novels.
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