Agnes Grey II

Agnes finds Matilda and Rosalie silly and selfish, and she starts to visit the poor in the village. She is friendly with one old lady, Nancy, who is losing her sight and wants someone to read the bible to her. THe local clergyman is haughty and insensitive, but there is a new curate Edward Weston, who is kinder. Agnes begins to see him around the village and likes him. Rosalie is attracted to him and tries to pretend to be nicer than she really is, to win his interest. However she wants to marry a rich gentleman. Agnes talks to Mr Weston and they build up a friendship. Rosalie continues to flirt with him but is looking for a suitable husband in between flirtations. Agnes is hurt that her one friend is being drawn away from her...Then she has a letter from her sister Mary to say that their father is very ill. She leaves and hurries home but her father dies before she gets there. She feels there is nothing to go back for, as Mr Weston has not made any advances towards her, and she dislikes the Murray family. After Mr Grey's death, she and her mother set up a small school and make a modest living that way. Later, she gets an invitation from Rosalie Murray who is now married to a baronet, Sir Thomas Ashby. She goes reluctantly and finds that Rosalie is depressed and wants someone to sympathise with her. She has grown to hate her husband, who is controlling and selfish and who resents her flirting with other men. She has a baby daughter but is not maternal. Agnes tries to cheer her but there is not much she can do for Rosalie-. She leaves Ashby Park and goes home and soon afterwards she finds that Mr Weston is now working in the next parish. She meets him at the seashore and they talk and renew their friendship. Mrs Grey meets him and likes him and they plan to marry. They have a happy life and produce three children. Agnes is based on the young naieve Anne, and Mr Weston on Willie Weightman... Anne gives herself a happy ending...but the novel is slight. Anne had some talent as a writer but she had not developed very much by the time of her early death. Agnes Grey has not much plot, and like Charlotte, Anne tended to have a biased view of the upper classes. Her upper class characters are not such caricatures as Charlotte's Blanche Ingram.. but her strict morality limited her. Charlotte did not really approve of Tenant, believing that the subject matter was sordid and that Anne should not have written it. Again Anne's limitations show up. Gilbert is a clumsy character, like many Bronte men he has a violent streak which does not fit in with his portayal as a respectable gentleman farmer. He loses his temper unreasonably with Frederick Lawrence and attacks him. Like her sisters Anne did not know many men, and apart from Edward Weston, she tended to portray them as very flawed and often violent. Huntingdon and his friends are alcoholics and womanisers and gamblers and fight among themselves. Gilbert is ready to fight with Frederick Lawrence and is jealous and angry at Helen because she refuses his advances. However she does have a talent, even if her strictness makes the novels hard going and she might have improved with maturity.

Agnes Grey By Anne Bronte I

This is the first novel published by Anne Bronte, which is somewhat autobiographical. It is based on her life as a governess. Agnes is the daughter of a clergyman, her mother is from a well to do family but married for love and the family end up in debt. Mr Grey is not very good at investing money. Agnes is naive and childlike, and wants to help her father,mother and sister, telling them that she can go out as a governess. She has a rather foolish idea that she will love the job, and that childen are sweet little things. She gets a job with the Bloomfield family and finds it is nothing like she imagined. The children are spoiled and unmanageable. She is not allowed to discipline them but is blamed for all their flaws. Tom the son is a brattish cruel boy who loves torturing animals and birds and she tries to stop him. She kills a nest of birds to stop him form hurting them... and before long, she is dismissed. She gets another job with a richer family, the Murrays. The children are older and not quite so unteachable but Agnes is ignored by the family to a large extent. Rosalie, the elder daughter is a flirt, and Matilda is a rough tomboy. She does not like them much but it is a degree better than her last job.

Jane Eyre V

Jane misses Rochester but she has now got a modest fortune and a home. However St John keeps trying to persuade her to marry him, and go to India as a missionary's wife. He does not love her, he is in love with a young woman who is well born but not suitable for the missions and he is so high minded that he gives up all hope of his love to take up a missionary post. Jane refuses. She wont marry a man she does not love. She wonders if she could go as his companion and sister, rather than his wife, but that does not seem possible. Then she hears Rochester's voice calling to her. She believes that he is trying to contact her. She decides to go back to Thornfield and talk to him. When she gets there, she finds that the house has been burned down and Rochester was burned and seriously injured in the fire. He had retired his housekeeper and sent Adele away to school, and then his wife burned the house. He tried to rescue her and was injured and blinded. Jane finds that Rochester is living in a smaller house he owns, and that he's a recluse. She goes to see him and tells him that she has come back. They talk and he's intrigued to find that she has now inherited a fortune and is a woman of substance while he has lost his house and is a semi invalid. He is at first reluctant to marry her when he is helpless but they agree to get married. Jane suggests that Adele be transferred to a less strict school. Rochester's mistress had abandoned the child as a baby,and he took care of her but he never believed she was his own daughter. The couple get married and settle in the smaller house, and Rochester's eyes improve so that he can see a bit. He and Jane have a son, and are a happy couple.

Jane Eyre IV

Jane has very little money but she takes her things and rides the stage coach as far as she can, but then has her belongings stolen. In desperation she sleeps on the moor. She is taken in by a family who live near where she collapsed... and they are kind to her. The family are not very rich but they are gentlefolk and they are willing to look after her. There are 2 sisters, Mary and Diana Rivers and their brother St John, who is a clergyman who wants to become a missionary. He is a rather cold serious man, who is not friendly or warm hearted. His sisters grow fond of Jane and she likes them. St John finds her a job at the village school which means she has a home and a small income. After a little while, Jane tells the Riverses her real name, and they discover that they are cousins. Her uncle Mr Eyre is also their uncle. Then Mr Eyre dies and leaves Jane his fortune, which leaves her quite well off. She feels concerned that her cousins didn't inherit anything from the uncle and she divides up her bequest among the family.

Jane Eyre III

Jane's cousin, Mrs Reed is very ill and asks her to visit and Jane does so. Mrs Reed is dying and tells her that she did her a wrong. Some years ago, Jane's uncle Mr Eyre wrote to her to ask her to come and live with him, and Mrs Reed, hating Jane, wrote back to him to tell him that Jane had died at school. Jane forgives her cousin and when she dies she attends the funeral. Rochester then tells Jane that he was just joking about marrying Blanche, and that he has no intention of doing so. He asks her to marry him. She agrees and they make plans for a very quiet wedding. Mrs Fairfax seems uneasy about the marriage. Jane writes to her long lost uncle to tell him she's being married. A short time before the wedding, someone breaks into her bedroom and tears her veil in half. She is unnerved, but Rochester tells her it is one of the servants, Grace Poole, who drinks. On the day of the wedding, the couple are in the church when someone stands up to say that there is an impediment to the marriage. It is Mr Mason, the man who was attacked at Thornfield... It turns out that he was visiting Thornfield as his sister is married to Rochester and she is confined to the attic of the house because she has become mad. When he went to see her, she had one of her maniacal fits and attacked him violently. Rochester tells Jane that he is married to Bertha Mason, during a trip to the West Indies, and then found that she was immoral and becoming insane. He had to keep her confined and she was looked after by Grace Poole, but Grace sometimes gets drunk and Bertha can escape to cause chaos in the house. Mr Mason is a friend of Jane's uncle Eyre and he learned from Eyre that Jane was marrying Rochester. He hurried to stop the wedding. Rochester tries to persuade Jane to go abroad with him where she can live as his wife, though they cannot marry. She refuses, as she is a strict Christian. She decides she must leave immediately to avoid temptation.

Jane Eyre II

Jane finds the house party stressful, and its not a good part of the book. Charlotte knew little of high society and her upper class characters are pretty exaggerated and badly drawn. They are all snobbish and rude and they make a fuss of Adele but make it clear that they dont like governesses and rate them as no higher than servants. Rochester pays a lot of attention to a young lady, Blanche Ingram, and seems to indicate that he is thinking of marrying her. However he talks to Jane in a friendly way at times and she begins to fall in love with him. She finds Blanche very haughty and unlikable. There are other things going on in the house which unnerve her. She hears strange noises at night, and another night, Rochester calls her, very late, to help him with a man who has been apparently injured by some kind of attack. Jane asks no questions but looks after the man till a doctor can be called. Rochester is pleased with her. The man leaves Thornfield and no more is heard of him. Rochester goes on hinting that he's going to marry Blanche and Jane gets angry. She tells him that if he marries Blanche she will leave and seek another post.

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is Charlotte's most famous novel, which was a runaway success for her. It is the story of an orphaned child, who has been looked after by a relative, Mrs Reed. Jane does not like Mrs Reed who is not kind to her and her cousins, John, Eliza and Georgiana, are even more unpleasant. John bullies her and is rough with her, but Jane fights back. She is not a meek or gentle child. Mrs Reed decides to send her away to school, and she is sent to a school called Lowood. It is a harsh place. She makes friends with a quiet shy saintly child, Helen Burns. Illness runs through the school because the girls are so badly fed and treated, and Helen dies. Jane continues to stand up for herself and things do improve. A nicer teacher becomes headmistress and Jane stays there for several year, rising to becoming a teacher herself. When she is 18 or so, she decides to leave and seek a post as governess. She gets a job at a Yorkshire house, called Thornfield, and her charge is a small French child called Adele. The housekeeper Mrs Fairfax is kindly, though strict, and Jane finds Adele silly and vain (she attributes this to her being half French) but not a difficult pupil. She does not meet her employer at first, as he travels a lot. Then one day she is out walking and meets a rather ugly man who has had a fall from his horse. She helps him and he is gruff but not ungrateful. She finds that he is her employer, Mr Rochester. He has come back to his estate and tells Mrs Fairfax that he will be holding a house party there soon. The housekeeper finds the place lonely, so she is not displeased. Jane is intrigued by the man, who seems rude and rough in his manner but he asks her to bring Adele in to meet his guests.