In Agnes Grey, upper-class women in Victorian society have limited options for exercising their talents or fulfilling their ambitions. But the novel suggests that women with good moral educations can find happiness despite these limitations, while those without good moral educations often end up behaving destructively due to their limited agency. The limitations on women become immediately clear in Agnes Grey when Agnes’s father, Richard Grey, loses money on an investment and becomes sick. His poor daughters Agnes and Mary have only a few socially acceptable options to support themselves economically during their father’s illness: they can marry, teach in a school, or become governesses—and that’s about all. When Agnes goes to work as a governess—a poorly paid, thankless, and lonely job—she survives mainly due to her good moral education. She insists on behaving well according to her own standards and derives her self-respect from doing so, something that keeps her mostly fulfilled.
By contrast, Agnes’s pretty teenage student Rosalie Murray has had a poor moral education. Though Rosalie is intelligent enough and is good at music and foreign languages, her mother Mrs. Murray wants her to accomplish and learn only that which will make her attractive to a rich, high-ranking potential husband. Under her mother’s malign influence, Rosalie grows up vain, shallow, and wants only to “conquer” men. After she marries rich aristocrat Sir Thomas Ashby, she has achieved the goal of her education. However, she feels bored, thwarted, and miserable, as she lacks the resilience of someone like Agnes. When she tries to exercise her talent for flirtation—the one thing she’s really good at—while married, her jealous husband is furious and secludes her in the countryside. Rosalie’s misery shows that limited social roles for women tend to privilege the attainment of the wrong skills and create unhappiness.
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Women and Fulfillment 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.
“Surely, Tom, you would not strike your sister! I hope I shall never see you do that.”
“You will sometimes: I’m obliged to do it now and then to keep her in order.”
“But it is not your business to keep her in order, you know, that is for—”
“Well, now go and put on your bonnet.”
The habitual fear of their father’s peevish temper, and the dread of the punishments he was wont to inflict when irritated, kept them generally within bounds in his immediate presence. The girls, too, had some fear of their mother’s anger; and the boy might occasionally be bribed to do as she bid him by the hope of reward: but I had no rewards to offer, and as for punishments, I was given to understand, the parents reserved that privilege for themselves; and yet they expected me to keep my pupils in order.
“Curse me, if I ever saw a nobler little scoundrel than that. He’s beyond petticoat government already: by God! He defies mother, granny, governess, and all! Ha, ha, ha!”
“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.”
“[W]hy, you must allow me some share of female vanity: I don’t pretend to be without that most essential attribute of our sex[.]”
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?
[B]esides my hope in God, my only consolation was in thinking that, though he knew it not, I was more worthy of his love than Rosalie Murray, charming and engaging as she was; for I could appreciate his excellence, which she could not: I would devote my life to the promotion of his happiness; she would destroy his happiness for the momentary gratification of her own vanity.
“Tilly, though she would have made a fine lad, was not quite what a young lady ought to be[.]”
We often pity the poor, because they have no leisure to mourn their departed relatives, and necessity obliges them to labour through their severest afflictions: but is not active employment the best remedy for overwhelming sorrow—the surest antidote for despair?
“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.”
