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 sets out for Horton Lodge on January 31. The journey is so long and snowy that she arrives past dark. In the schoolroom she meets her new students, two teenage girls and two boys. The younger girl, a tomboyish 14-year-old named Matilda, shows her to her room. No one brings up Agnes’s luggage, however, until she goes out, finds a servant, and asks after it. When Agnes wakes up the next morning, she goes down to the schoolroom reminding herself to call her students “Miss” and “Master” rather than by their given names, as Mr. Bloomfield and Mrs. Bloomfield had taught her they wanted—despite Agnes’s feeling that this is an “absurd” piece of formality that smothers friendliness.
Sadly, Agnes has learned from the Bloomfields that employers of governesses (that is, rich parents) want governesses to treat their students like little employers themselves rather than children in need of guidance and discipline. Agnes believes that such behavior is “absurd,” but she is willing to engage in it to secure a job and support her family, showing that she is pragmatic as well as principled.
Themes
Agnes resolves not to bore her audience with a minute accounting of how she came to understand the Murrays. Instead, she summarizes the impressions she gained of them over her first year of employment. Agnes almost never sees Mr. Murray, though she hears he is an avid hunter and skilled farmer; occasionally, she hears him cursing at servants.
Almost the first thing readers learn about Mr. Murray is that he verbally abuses his servants—suggesting that Agnes was wrong to hope he would treat his employees better than Mr. Bloomfield did simply because he is higher-class than Mr. Bloomfield.
Themes
Mrs. Murray is an attractive 40-year-old who likes fashion, parties, and sleeping late; she wants Agnes to make her daughters “superficially attractive and showily accomplished” and her sons good at Latin—without her children needing to make much effort. She advises Agnes to come and get her if any of the children need a stern talking-to, as it wouldn’t be “proper” for Agnes to talk to them that way herself. Naïve Agnes is shocked at how concerned Mrs. Murray is for her children’s absolute comfort—while never talking about Agnes’s comfort.
The negatively connoted words “superficially” and “showily” indicate that Agnes does not share Mrs. Murray’s implied value system, in which women should achieve economic security and social status through marriage to the richest, highest-born man available. Yet Agnes’s own precarious position as a female employee makes clear that advantageous marriages are one of the few ways that middle-class Victorian women can find security. Meanwhile, Mrs. Murray’s claim that it wouldn’t be “proper” for Agnes to chastise the Murray children suggests that the Murrays, like the Bloomfields, are more interested in preserving their households’ economic and social hierarchy than helping Agnes be an effective teacher.
Themes
Rosalie Murray, who’s 16 when Agnes arrives, is an unusually pretty girl with brown hair and blue eyes. Though cold to Agnes at first, she becomes as fond of Agnes as she can be of a family employee—for she’s very status conscious. Agnes suspects that Rosalie admires Agnes more than Rosalie herself realizes, for Agnes’s honesty, dutifulness, and open praise of upright behavior. According to Agnes, Rosalie’s admiration shows not Agnes’s goodness so much as the Murrays’ sad lack of it.
This passage indicates that Rosalie can only care so much about a family employee because status matters so much to her—emphasizing that status hierarchies tend to make higher-status people indifferent, callous, or even cruel toward lower-status people.
Themes
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Rosalie’s lack of principle pains Agnes in part because Agnes quite likes the girl: she’s good-tempered, high-spirited, and talented at music and foreign languages. Yet her family has never taught her sound moral principles or encouraged her to apply herself, whereas they have encouraged her to abuse power over servants and pursue her own whims. Thus, Rosalie is shallow, undisciplined, and vain. She’s only interested in learning things that make her attractive to young men, such as singing or French.
Rosalie has learned to be vain and lazy from her parents despite her naturally occurring virtues, showing the importance of the family environment to children’s moral formation. That her family has actively encouraged her to mistreat servants, meanwhile, indicates that the Murrays are more interested in reinforcing social hierarchies than they are in modeling moral behavior to their children. Finally, Rosalie’s sole ambition is to be attractive, suggesting how limited opportunities for Victorian girls and women limit their dreams, too.
Themes
Matilda, Rosalie’s tomboyish younger sister, is rather large and awkward—but doesn’t care that she isn’t pretty like Rosalie. Nor does she care about education or “accomplishments.” When Agnes attempts to teach her anything, she develops a foul mood and tends to blame Agnes for her own mistakes. Yet as soon as she is riding horses or playing with dogs or her siblings, she’s good-tempered again. Mrs. Murray tries to tell Agnes to flatter Matilda into learning, so that Matilda need make no effort—but Agnes, frustrated, thinks that all learning requires effort. Matilda has also learned to swear from Mr. Murray and from the male servants, which shocks Agnes.
Since kindness toward animals correlates with moral goodness throughout the novel, Matilda’s fondness for horses and dogs may indicate that she, like her sister Rosalie, has some innate virtues. Yet where Mrs. Murray’s shallowness has led Rosalie astray, Agnes clearly thinks that Mr. Murray’s coarseness has led Matilda astray, leading Matilda to imitate her father’s bad “masculine” behavior the way Rosalie imitates her mother’s bad “feminine” behavior.
Themes
11-year-old John Murray has a good enough natural character but, having been poorly brought up, is overly energetic and “unteachable.” Luckily for Agnes, the Murrays send him to boarding school after a year. 10-year-old Charles, Mrs. Murray’s pet, is a weak and nasty little liar; as Mrs. Murray insists that Agnes correct all his mistakes at once rather than let him figure out how to fix them. And as Charles tells on her if she tries to make him work harder, he learns virtually nothing in two years, after which he too is sent to boarding school.
Agnes’s brief accounts of John and Charles Murray make clear yet again how parents can spoil their children and render them “unteachable” despite educators’ best efforts—especially if parents are powerful employers who can dictate to educators how to teach.
Themes
The Murrays’ house, Horton Lodge, is two miles from church, so the Murrays often take the carriage. If the children decide to walk, Agnes can walk with them—otherwise she ends up crushed in the worst seat in the carriage, which makes her feel sick all through church services. Once, Matilda exclaims how strange it is that the carriage makes Agnes sick when it doesn’t make her sick, and Rosalie exclaims about the “nasty, horrid place” Miss Grey chooses to sit in.
Matilda and Rosalie’s comments show their thoughtlessness and lack of empathy for their family employee. Matilda fails to make the connection between Agnes’s sickness and the uncomfortable position the family carriage forces Agnes into, while Rosalie recognizes that the position is “nasty” and “horrid” but doesn’t seem to realize that Agnes ends up there due to the Murrays’ actions rather than her own preferences.
Themes
The Murray children keep irregular hours and often bother Agnes to get their lessons over with at strange times. The servants, observing their employers’ careless behavior toward Agnes, learn to treat her rather contemptuously. Yet—especially after the boys leave for school—Agnes feels that she is able to make small improvements with Matilda and Rosalie, who think she is a strange and sometimes annoying do-gooder but nevertheless entertaining in her way.
The servants’ learned contempt toward Agnes shows how disrespectfully the Murrays treat Agnes—illustrating the strange, alienated position of the educated and middle-class yet low-status governess in the Victorian household. Yet the minor improvements that Agnes makes with the Murray girls suggest that Agnes isn’t entirely powerless in the household.
Themes
