Review: “Agnes Grey” by Anne Bronte

Thumbs up for Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. Literature.

I guess I have a weakness for those prim, pious Victorian-era romances about clergymen’s daughters, viz. Little Women and Jane Eyre. Agnes Grey is like Jane Eyre without the sturm und drang. Recommended if you like that sort of thing. I do.

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. I will not presume to say how far this irresistible power of assimilation extends; but if one civilised man were doomed to pass a dozen years amid a race of intractable savages, unless he had power to improve them, I greatly question whether, at the close of that period, he would not have become, at least, a barbarian himself. And I, as I could not make my young companions better, feared exceedingly that they would make me worse—would gradually bring my feelings, habits, capacities, to the level of their own; without, however, imparting to me their lightheartedness and cheerful vivacity.