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’s mother rents a house in a fashionable town and finds some initial students. Though some people might pity the poor for having to work through their grief, Agnes thinks work comforts her mother. She herself is very sad to leave her childhood home forever for her last six weeks at Horton Lodge. Two weeks after her return, while she is walking back from visiting Nancy Brown, Mr. Weston runs into her and asks sympathetically how her mother is doing. After Agnes explains their plans, he asks when she’s leaving and whether she’s happy to go. When Agnes says she’s happy in some ways, Mr. Weston asks how leaving could make her sad—and Agnes, embarrassed, answers evasively.
Agnes believes that work comforts her grieving mother, a belief suggesting that people benefit from and want to exercise their energies and talents. This belief suggests, for instance, that it is no wonder that Rosalie ends up a shameless flirt when her society has taught her to channel her intelligence and ambition only into attracting men. Meanwhile, Mr. Weston’s question to Agnes hints that he is seeking indirect confirmation that she has feelings for him—confirmation Agnes is too shy to provide.
Themes
Mr. Weston asks whether Agnes will miss Matilda. Agnes says she probably will—after all, she misses Rosalie, and Matilda is in some respects better because she’s honest. When Mr. Weston asks whether Rosalie wasn’t honest, Agnes hedges and says she’s “a little artful.” Mr. Weston says that that description makes sense of some behavior from Rosalie, whom he already knew was vain, that confused him before.
In the Victorian context, the word “artful” can have negative connotations of artificiality and manipulativeness. When Mr. Weston finds the description of Rosalie as “artful” revealing, it implies that he has just realized Rosalie was flirting with him not because she liked him but because she wanted to manipulate him.
Themes
Mr. Weston walks out of his way to accompany Agnes and talk with her. After they part, Agnes thinks to herself that she could be happy anywhere if he were her true friend. Yet for the next month, she rarely sees him. On her final Sunday in the village, Agnes has to hold back tears in church, thinking that the service is the last time she’ll hear Mr. Weston’s voice. But as she’s leaving the church, he stops her to say goodbye to her. He says they could meet again and asks whether it matters to her if they do. Agnes says it does: she would be “very glad” to meet him again. They part.
Agnes’s belief that she could be happy so long as Mr. Weston is her friend emphasizes the novel’s implicit argument that a happy life is based on love and friendship rather than wealth or status. Shy Agnes’s admission that she would be “very glad” to see Mr. Weston again is as close as she can bring herself to a confession of love at this point.
Themes
