In Agnes Grey, genteel women are pressured to marry for money and rank and punished socially if they don’t—yet the novel suggests that women who marry for love have at least a chance at happiness, while those who marry for money end up miserable. The novel illustrates the pressure women face to marry for money and rank through both Agnes’s mother and Agnes’s student Rosalie Murray. Agnes’s mother, the daughter of a rich squire, fell in love with Agnes’s father Richard Grey, who’s a poor clergyman but a good person. When she chose to marry him rather than a man with money and a title, her rich family disowned her. Yet despite the Greys’ limited means, they have a happy marriage. After Richard dies, Agnes’s mother receives a letter from her father offering to support her financially and write Agnes and her sister Mary into his will if she will admit she was wrong to marry Richard—highlighting that the pressure to marry for money never fully disappears, even as it changes form over time. Agnes’s mother refuses, claiming never to have regretted her 30 years of marriage to her best friend. By contrast, 18-year-old Rosalie Murray marries Sir Thomas Ashby—with her mother Mrs. Murray’s express encouragement—despite having heard alarming rumors about his character, because he is the richest and highest-born of her many suitors. She almost immediately regrets the decision, finding Sir Thomas a controlling husband who cheats on her and drinks too much. Agnes’s mother’s fate suggests that while a good marriage doesn’t guarantee total happiness (money problems and death are, the novel shows, still inevitable), women who marry men they love and admire have a chance at good times and the consolation of self-respect in hard times. Rosalie’s fate, on the other hand, shows that women who marry men who aren’t good people and who they don’t love are doomed to be miserable even in rich surroundings.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Money vs. Love in Marriage ThemeTracker
Money vs. Love in Marriage Quotes in Agnes Grey
An elegant house and spacious grounds were not to be despised; but she would rather live in a cottage with Richard Grey than in a palace with any other man in the world.
“You did not ask me if Mr Richardson were a good, wise, or amiable man.”
“Sir Thomas is young, rich and gay; but an ugly beast, nevertheless; however mamma says I should not mind that after a few months’ acquaintance.”
“But if I could always be young, I would always be single. I should like to enjoy myself thoroughly, and coquet with all the world, till I am on the verge of being called an old maid; and then, to escape the infamy of that, after having made ten thousand conquests, to break all their hearts save one, by marrying some high-born, rich, indulgent husband, whom, on the other hand, fifty ladies were dying to have.”
Habitual associates are known to exercise a great influence over each other’s minds and manners. Those whose actions are for ever before our eyes, whose words are ever in our ears, will naturally lead us, albeit against our will, slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, perhaps, to act and speak as they do.
As for the primroses, I kept two of them in a glass in my room until they were completely withered, and the housemaid threw them out; and the petals of the other I pressed between the leaves of my Bible—I have them still, and mean to keep them always.
If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior. So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day. All very judicious and proper, no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience?
“It seems unnatural: but some people think rank and wealth the chief good; and, if they can secure that for their children, they think they have done their duty.”
“True: but is it not strange that persons of experience, who have been married themselves, should judge so falsely?”
“[I]f he married a richer wife, misfortunes and trials would no doubt have come upon him still; while I am egotist enough to imagine that no other woman could have cheered him through that so well: not that I am superior to the rest, but I was made for him, and he for me[.]”
Alas! how far the promise of anticipation exceeds the pleasure of possession!
“It’s the husband’s part to please the wife, not hers to please him; and if he isn’t satisfied with her as she is—and thankful to possess her too—he isn’t worthy of her, that’s all.”
“But you knew what he was before you married him.”
“No; I only thought so: I did not half know him really. I know you warned me against it, and I wish I had listened to you: but it’s too late to regret that now. And besides, mamma ought to have known better than either of us, and she never said anything against it—quite the contrary.”
“I am not so presumptuous as to believe that […] though you tell it me; but if it were so, I am rather particular in my notions of a companion for life, and perhaps I might not find one to suit me among the ladies you mention.”
