“What business had I to think of one that never thought of me?”
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Work
In her Introduction to an edition of "Agnes Grey," Barbara A. Suess writes "Bronte provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting." Anne Bronte relies on her own personal involvement in her duties as a home teacher to bring Agnes Grey to life. Agnes, a rector's daughter, must take employment as a governess to help her family make financial ends meet. But her situations with the spoiled, self-obsessed Bloomfield children and later with the ruthless Murray family forces her into a lonely, humiliating experience that is a wearying one extraordinarily blossoming into a romantic relationship with the local vicar, Edward Weston. Agnes' concern for her family brings her to these unfortunate trials where she suffers stupid and egotistic proprietors and their over-indulged progeny. She was not able to foresee the hardships she would have to undergo along with the class snobbery to which she was also subjected. And yet a career as a governess was the only "respectable" job available to an unmarried woman in Victorian England. Bronte's simple and uncomplicated rendition of these sordid affairs made circumstances surrounding such brutish conditions authentic enough to necessitate investigation and improvement.
Quotes
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Anne Brontë
Canonical work source
“What business had I to think of one that never thought of me?”
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“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the...”
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“Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read.”
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“The ties that bind us to life are tougher than you imagine, or than any one can who has not felt how roughly they may be pulled without breaking.”
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“We often pity the poor, because they have no leisure to mourn their departed relatives, and necessity obliges them to labor through their severest afflictions: but is not active employment t...”
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“But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes;...”
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“But, God knows best, I concluded.”
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“One bright day in the last week of February, I was walking in the park, enjoying the threefold luxury of solitude, a book, and pleasant weather.”
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“He had not breathed a word of love, or dropped one hint of tenderness or affection, and yet I had been supremely happy. To be near him, to hear him talk as he did talk, and to feel that he t...”
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“The next visit I paid to Nancy Brown was in the second week in March: for, though I had many spare minutes during the day, I seldom could look upon an hour as entirely my own; since, when ev...”
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