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 dislikes visits from Mrs. Bloomfield’s brother Uncle Robson, a strong, stupid, condescending man, because he has a bad effect on the children. He encourages Mary Ann’s superficiality by praising her prettiness, which Agnes has tried to teach her is less important than her education and behavior. He also gives Tom alcohol and encourages the boy, through his own behavior and through words, to torture animals. Uncle Robson, for example, is very cruel to his hunting dogs and also takes the children “bird-nesting”—going to hunt down and kill baby birds.
This passage reinforces what readers have already guessed: Tom has learned his cruel behavior toward helpless animals and social “inferiors” from his older male relatives, especially his father and his uncle. Mary Ann has learned to value herself for her looks rather than her accomplishments in the same way. Because Agnes is lower status in the Bloomfield household than Uncle Robson, the children are more likely to listen to him than to her, so his bad influence easily undoes whatever she has been able to teach the children.
Themes
One day, Tom runs into the garden holding a nest of baby birds and announces his plan to amuse himself by killing them. Agnes, standing by, tells him she won’t let him torture the animals: he must kill them quickly or return them so their parents can feed them. If he doesn’t, she’ll kill them herself. Tom, laughing, tells her she won’t dare because Mr. Bloomfield, Mrs. Bloomfield, and Uncle Robson would be angry at her. Agnes says she’ll do what she believes to be right.
Agnes, as a young woman and an employee, has less social power than her employers the Bloomfields or Uncle Robson—but that doesn’t make her a pushover. Implicitly, she insists on doing what is right—preventing the torture of animals—not only out of moral sensibility and self-respect but also out of a desire to model moral behavior to Tom.
Themes
Agnes finds a large stone. Then she asks what Tom will do with the birds. He describes how he will torture them, so Agnes drops the stone onto the nest, killing them. Tom, furious, sees his Uncle Robson walking up (and about to kick his dog). He runs to Uncle Robson and complains violently about Agnes, which makes Uncle Robson laugh. Uncle Robson praises Tom’s refusal of “petticoat government” and promises to get him another bird’s nest. Agnes tells Uncle Robson that if he does, she’ll kill those too. He glares at her. When she doesn’t cringe, he stomps into the house.
The phrase “petticoat government” refers to female authority, as petticoats (underskirts) were clothes worn by Victorian women, not men. The association in this scene between young Tom’s animal cruelty and his disrespect for women implies that men who harm helpless animals, like Tom and Uncle Robson, may also be likely to despise and hurt women—who in the Victorian era had much less power than men.
Themes
Tom runs to complain to Mrs. Bloomfield. The next time Agnes sees her, she coldly professes her regret that Agnes “interfere[d] with Master Bloomfield’s amusements.” Agnes—quoting the Bible—tries to convince Mrs. Bloomfield that people have no right to torture animals and acting mercifully toward animals teaches virtue; Mrs. Bloomfield replies that animals “were all created” for people’s “convenience” and that Agnes was merciless in thwarting Tom’s enjoyment. Their talk ends.
When Agnes—with sincere religious feeling and quotations from the Bible—tries to convince Mrs. Bloomfield that how Tom treats helpless animals will have ramifications for his moral character, Mrs. Bloomfield uses a shallow, self-serving interpretation of Christian scripture to claim that God created animals merely for people’s “convenience.” Thus, Mrs. Bloomfield thwarts Agnes’s attempts to teach Tom better morals, insists on a destructive power hierarchy in the household, and uses insincere religion as a tool to justify her son’s cruel behavior.
Themes
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Agnes dislikes it when anyone visits the Bloomfields, not just when Mrs. Bloomfield Senior and Uncle Robson visit, because Mrs. Bloomfield expects her to keep Tom and Mary Ann away from the guests but never helps her do so. Then, one day, Mrs. Bloomfield summons her and fires her on the grounds that—though they have no complaints about Agnes’s morals or behavior—the children aren’t improving, which she believes is because Agnes doesn’t discipline the children firmly enough or try hard enough. Agnes is devastated to be sent home a failure at her first job, but she resolves to try again—hopefully with a better family.
The Bloomfields have forbidden Agnes from disciplining their children and have consistently undermined all Agnes’s attempts to improve the children’s behavior—yet they blame the children’s failure to improve on Agnes, not themselves. This stunning misdiagnosis of the problem shows the Bloomfields’ failure to understand their power as parents—and, more generally, the tendency of higher-status people to scapegoat lower-status people when things go wrong.
Themes
