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 lives at home for several months, happy to be among her loved ones. Yet as her sick father Richard Grey worries incessantly about what will happen to her, Mary, and their mother when he dies, Agnes takes her mother aside and says she would like to find another governess position to help the family finances. When she says that not everyone could be like the Bloomfields, her mother warns her that some might be worse—but Agnes persists. As the families advertising for governesses tend to make stringent demands while offering low pay, Agnes’s mother suggests that Agnes put out her own advertisement listing her thorough educational accomplishments (which include German, French, and Latin).
That families advertising for governesses want a great deal from their employees while offering small salaries speaks to the unenviable position of women in the Victorian era: because women had low social status and limited job opportunities, prospective employers of female educators like governesses had substantial power over them. This is true even for a highly educated young woman like Agnes, who knows three foreign languages in addition to her other accomplishments.
Themes
Two families reply to Agnes’s advertisement, and one agrees to the salary she demanded. Agnes is worried that that family’s children are too old for her to teach, but her mother encourages her to be bold and self-confident. Agnes takes the position and plans to travel to Horton Lodge 70 miles away to become the Murrays’ governess. As Agnes has never traveled more than 20 miles from home, this distance seems like an adventure to her. Further, as Mr. Murray is higher-class than Mr. Bloomfield, she hopes he will have better manners and treat her more like a social equal. She is also excited at her higher salary, of which she anticipates saving a large fraction to help her family.
Agnes hopes that Mr. Murray will treat her better than Mr. Bloomfield, indicating that she still believes higher social class correlates with better manners and more kindness. Yet given how the Bloomfields saw their higher social status relative to Agnes as an excuse to treat her badly, readers may doubt that an even greater gap between Mr. Murray’s social status and Agnes’s will lead him to behave kindly toward her.
Themes
