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
The next day, Rosalie is annoyed that Mr. Hatfield proposed so quickly. She’s bored now without parties to attend or Mr. Hatfield to flirt with. On Sunday, she’s likewise annoyed that Mr. Hatfield preaches rather than feigning illness—and that when he does preach, he doesn’t look at her, though she claims that his strict failure to glance at her means he must have been thinking of her constantly.
Due to the limited social roles available to middle-class Victorian women, the goal of Rosalie’s education is marriage. Without men to flirt with, Rosalie can’t locate an outlet for her energy or intelligence. The social limitations on Rosalie lead her to destructive behavior, namely trying to break Mr. Hatfield’s heart and becoming annoyed when he doesn’t betray adequate symptoms of heartbreak.
Themes
One morning, Rosalie demands that Agnes walk with her into the village to shop. Agnes suspects Rosalie is hoping to run into Mr. Hatfield or some other admirer. After shopping, Rosalie runs into two young ladies she knows, and the three walk together. Agnes walks behind because she knows the girls will ignore her if she walks with them, which she finds annoying.
Rosalie’s restlessness when she lacks admirers shows how the Victorian emphasis on marriage as the end goal of middle-class young women’s lives stunts their intellects and ambitions. The way that Rosalie and her friends conspicuously ignore Agnes, meanwhile, highlights their classist cruelty toward lower-status members of the Murray household.
Themes
Mr. Weston approaches Agnes, notes she’s walking alone again, and asks what sort of people the girls ahead are. Agnes admits she doesn’t know, as they never talk to her. When Mr. Weston suggests that perhaps things like this are why Agnes says she couldn’t live without a home, Agnes says it’s more that she can’t live without friends—and her family are her only friends. Mr. Weston asks whether she couldn’t make more friends, and Agnes says that her governess job makes that hard. Mr. Weston asks whether Rosalie and Matilda aren’t her friends, and Agnes says no—they have other friends they prefer.
The questions that Mr. Weston asks about Rosalie and her friends, as well as about Agnes’s relationship to her home, make clear that he sees the classist cruelty and social isolation that the Murrays inflict on Agnes. His desire to talk to Agnes in turn makes clear that he does not share the Murrays’ snobbery: he treats Agnes like a person worth talking to even though she is a female employee.
Themes
Mr. Weston asks whether Agnes entertains herself by reading. She says she does, and for about half an hour they talk, Mr. Weston asking Agnes about her habits, thoughts, and questions. His interest makes Agnes’s heart beat more noticeably. Yet after Rosalie’s friends turn off toward their own home and Mr. Weston is about to say goodbye to Agnes, Rosalie turns around, sees him, and approaches, engaging him in bright conversation. After he finally does leave, Rosalie laughs and exults that she has “shot him through the heart.” Agnes, horrified, silently prays for Mr. Weston’s sake that Rosalie is incorrect—as well as feeling that her own hopes may be ruined.
Agnes feels her heart beating when Mr. Weston engages her in attentive conversation, a physical cue that suggests her growing romantic attraction to him. Rosalie’s claim that she has “shot [Mr. Weston] through the heart” emphasizes that she sees flirtation as a kind of violent status game: she is a hunter, Mr. Weston is her prey, and she establishes her superiority over him by figuratively “shooting” him. That Agnes prays Rosalie is wrong emphasizes the centrality of religion and shared religious values to Agnes’s crush on Mr. Weston.
Themes
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