Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Agnes Grey, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Education, Authority, and Class
Money vs. Love in Marriage
Women and Fulfillment
Power and Cruelty
Religion
Summary
Analysis
Agnes now teaches Rosalie only German and drawing; Matilda is her sole full-time student. With her free time, Agnes writes letters, studies, and takes walks. As she has been introduced to poor cottagers on the Murrays’ lands by going on charitable visits to them with Rosalie and Matilda—who mock the cottagers they’re supposed to be helping, to Agnes’s dismay—Agnes has begun visiting several cottagers by herself.
Rosalie and Matilda make fun of the poor people they are supposed to be helping, a clear indication that they see nothing wrong with casual cruelty toward lower-status people. By contrast, Agnes genuinely wants to help those less fortunate than herself.
Themes
One February day, Agnes decides to go read to a cottager, a widow named Nancy Brown, who is suffering from an eye inflammation and so cannot currently read herself. Agnes finds Nancy knitting at home with her cat and asks how she is. Nancy says that she’s feeling cheerful though her eyes are not improved—which is good news, as Nancy also suffers from “religious melancholy.” After Agnes has read a Gospel passage to Nancy, Nancy unexpectedly asks for Agnes’s opinion of Mr. Weston. When Agnes says that he preaches well, Nancy adds that he also speaks well—he visits the poor villagers often and is far more welcome than Mr. Hatfield.
As kindness toward animals correlates with moral goodness throughout the novel, Nancy Brown’s cat may symbolize that Nancy is a morally upright person whose opinion ought to be taken seriously. “Melancholy” can simply mean “sadness,” but it was also a common term in the pre-psychiatry era for a cluster of symptoms people would now associate with clinical depression. Nancy’s abrupt revelation that Mr. Weston is kinder to and more beloved by the village poor than Mr. Hatfield, meanwhile, confirms Agnes’s good first impression of Mr. Weston and negative judgment on Mr. Hatfield.
Themes
Nancy explains to Agnes that Mr. Hatfield is always criticizing the poor villagers he visits. After Nancy became terrified that she couldn’t love other people or God as the Bible instructs, she asked Mr. Hatfield to visit. He listened to her worries scornfully and told her she needed to attend church rather than reading her Bible alone. When she explained that her rheumatism made it hard to walk to church in winter, he accused her of laziness and told her that if she couldn’t get comfort from church, she was likely damned. Then he asked after the Miss Murrays. When Nancy said she’d seen Rosalie nearby, Mr. Hatfield hurried out happily—kicking Nancy’s cat on the way.
In the novel, people’s cruelty toward animals both symbolizes and predicts their cruelty toward lower-status humans. When Mr. Hatfield kicks Nancy’s cat, then, it functions as a condemnation of his attitude toward Nancy and the poor villagers in general. Rather than trying to help Nancy with her depression and religious doubts, Mr. Hatfield simply blames her for them—showing the shallowness of his nominal Christianity.
Themes
Nancy apologizes to Agnes for talking so much, but Agnes urges her to continue. Nancy explains that after Mr. Hatfield’s visit, she did try to attend church—and the cold walks caused her eye inflammation, while the services didn’t ease her melancholy. One Sunday, she approached Mr. Hatfield to discuss her unhappy fears again, and he told her not to bother him. When the new curate Mr. Weston asked who she was, she overheard Mr. Hatfield call her an “old fool.” Yet the next day, Mr. Weston visited her, petted her cat kindly, asked for her story, and listened respectfully.
Whereas Mr. Hatfield kicked Nancy’s cat, Mr. Weston treats it gently. Given the association between kindness to animals and kindness to vulnerable humans throughout the novel, Mr. Weston’s good treatment of Nancy’s cat clearly indicates that he is more sincerely religious and a better shepherd of the village parishioners than Mr. Hatfield.
Themes
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Nancy explains that Mr. Weston told her that Mr. Hatfield’s advice to attend church was correct but incomplete: church is an aid to following the two great commandments, loving God and loving one’s neighbor. And doing so becomes easier when you consider God as the source of all goodness and your “best friend” and your neighbors as beloved of God. Moreover, if you can’t feel love for your neighbors, you should still try to do good for them, and you may slowly come to love them. After Mr. Weston left, one of Nancy’s neighbors came over and almost started a fight with her, but Nancy recalled Mr. Weston’s words, responded kindly, and defused the situation.
Mr. Hatfield simply ordered Nancy to attend church, the way a superior orders around an inferior. By contrast, Mr. Weston gave Nancy a rationale for attending church—the way one equal reasons with another—and then gave her sound advice based on their shared Christian beliefs. Mr. Weston’s kindness, gentleness, and helpfulness toward Nancy show his religious sincerity in contrast with Mr. Hatfield’s cruelty and hypocrisy.
Themes
Agnes asks whether Mr. Weston has visited Nancy since then. Nancy says that he has, though he is busy visiting many villagers. His excellent sermons make her very happy and inspire her to be kind to her neighbors. When Agnes at last leaves Nancy’s cottage, she’s feeling very happy too.
Nancy’s revelation that Mr. Weston visits many of the poor villagers emphasizes again his goodness and religious sincerity. Meanwhile, Agnes’s happiness at the revelation may come from religious feeling—or may indicate that Agnes has a deepening crush on Mr. Weston and is glad to hear good things about him.
Themes
Another day, Agnes goes to read to a poor cottager dying of tuberculosis, and both he and his wife praise Mr. Weston, who visits them often. They consider Mr. Weston immensely superior to Mr. Hatfield, who visits hastily and is always criticizing the sick man’s wife. Mr. Weston even sent them extra coal when he noticed their cottage was cold and their fire small. At this point, Agnes remembers “with a species of exultation” that Rosalie has harshly criticized Mr. Weston for not dressing as flashily as Mr. Hatfield.
The dying cottager’s contrasting accounts of Mr. Hatfield and Mr. Weston makes clear yet again that Mr. Hatfield is a cruel, status-conscious religious hypocrite, whereas Mr. Weston is a good and religiously sincere man. Agnes’s “exultation” at remembering Rosalie’s criticisms of Mr. Weston may hint that Agnes is falling in love with Mr. Weston—and doesn’t want flirtatious Rosalie to like him too.
Themes
Agnes goes home very happy: prior to this point, she has had nothing both new and improving to think about and has worried that socializing only with Rosalie and Matilda was likely to make her a worse person as their flaws rubbed off on her. Mr. Weston offers her a new model of human behavior that is morally improving to think about. She begins to look forward to Sundays as a time she can listen to Mr. Weston and contemplate his virtues.
The novel has already illustrated how the Bloomfield and Murray parents have taught their children bad behavior and values—not necessarily explicitly, but through the example of their own behavior. Now Agnes is suggesting that this kind of education doesn’t only occur between parents and children: a person’s friends, acquaintances, and even employers “teach” them how to behave by their example. Agnes is worried about learning the lessons that the superficial Murrays have to teach, so she latches on to Mr. Weston as a better example and “teacher.”
Themes
