But what we can say for Agnes Grey is this: it is realistic in style, voice, and plot. Almost everything that happens in its pages can be believed. Anne also does not shy away from some of the nastier aspects of Victorian life. This Realism was startling at the time. True, Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is probably a better representation of her Realism. It certainly provoked more anger and controversy. This is because her second and final novel dealt more openly with alcoholism, poverty, and despair. These were big taboos in Victorian literature.
But in a sense, Agnes Grey is even more realistic because its events are more ordinary. It is a completely true to life book, drawn from Anne's professional experiences. "All true stories contain instruction," Agnes tells us-and that's the novel in a nutshell. She never pretends that she's going to thrill us with plot twists or blissful romance. She is simply going to tell the story of the governess and hope that we can take something away from it. Anne was essentially a Realist, and she was writing well before Flaubert's Madame Bovary established the movement. But no one is willing to suggest that Anne was ahead of her time. Was she? Or did she just sort of stumble upon Realism by accident? How do we explain Anne Bronte? Where did she come from?
The six Bronte siblings were born in Yorkshire to a poor clergyman who had married a woman from a wealthy family. That should sound familiar to Agnes Grey readers. The Bronte children were raised by an aunt after their mother's death. Two of the children died while still quite young from a tuberculosis epidemic that swept through their boarding school (this event found its way into the school section of Jane Eyre, as you may recall). Branwell, the only brother in the family, was the oldest Bronte, followed by Charlotte, Emily, and finally Anne.
Anne's childhood, and that of her siblings, was isolated, dull, and spent in a parsonage. As kids they wrote tales of invented fantasy realms, and read the gothic fiction and other books which would later find a way into their novels (although Anne seems not to have been influenced by that genre). After leaving school due to illness, Anne worked as (what else?) a governess. Brother Branwell actually found work as a tutor for the same family. Rumored to be the smartest and most talented Bronte while still a boy, Branwell was given over to what the Victorians might deem "excesses." Booted out of the tutoring position after an affair with the lady of the house, he took to booze and drugs. His slide into alcoholism and other problems inspired The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
The three Bronte sisters, however, still had it together, and began writing poetry and novels. Writing under the male pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (I think you can figure out which was which), they published a book of poems. Then each turned to novel writing, eventually coming out with a joint manuscript of three novels, which was passed from one publishing house to the next. It contained Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's Agnes Grey, and Charlotte's The Professor. The Professor was rejected and only published much later, but the other novels were published and bound together. I imagine that was awkward, given that Charlotte was the oldest. Emily never published another novel, but Charlotte went on to become the most famous Bronte, writing Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette.
Anne published Agnes Grey in 1847. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall came out the next year. And over the course of that year and the following, while Charlotte was working on her second novel, Shirley, three of the four living Brontes died of tuberculosis-first Branwell, then Emily, and finally Anne. She was only twenty-nine at the time.
So how can we account for Anne? The tragedy of her own life and that of her brother definitely had an impact. In fact, this was the explanation that Charlotte offered after her death. She was horrified by Anne's two novels, particularly the second. She thought the very fact that it dealt on alcoholism and other distressing things was a dangerous sign of immorality-a common assessment among 19th-century critics. Anne was seen as deliberately wallowing in filth and brutality. Charlotte didn't try to defend her work, which may be why it is given such a hard time today, and simply tried to assure people that the two novels didn't really reflect Anne's personality. She attempted to explain away the harsh Realism of the two novels with a sort of "monkey-see-monkey-do" argument. Anne didn't have any literary theory or message behind her work, Charlotte assures us. The Realist ethic was, after all, disturbing at the time. She was simply writing about what she had seen-her brother's decline in particular.
And to some extent this sounds like a good explanation. Agnes Grey is clearly derived from Anne's own life and experiences, as is the second novel. But I don't think it's fair of Charlotte to dismiss her sister's work as a carbon copy of real life and nothing more. As a younger sibling, I can relate to Anne's predicament. In reality, she did have a literary theory. She understood that she was writing in a Realist vein and that by doing so, she was being radical and different. Her preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall testifies to this. "Truth always conveys its own moral," she tells us. She was one of the first writers to recognize that books aren't wicked or rotten if they deal with real life. People don't want to have moral platitudes thrown at them in books; they want to see their own lives and experiences reflected so that they can derive some meaning from them. So the youngest Bronte really was ahead of her time.
