Charlotte thought about liberty and justice frequently throughout her adult life. Years later Charlotte Brontë, discussing Agnes Grey with Elizabeth Gaskell, told her: “none but those who had been in the position of a governess could ever realize the dark side of ‘respectable’ human nature…daily giving way to selfishness and ill-temper, till its conduct towards those dependent on it sometimes amount to a tyranny.” Here she echoes Jane Eyre’s description of John Reed’s “violent tyrannies,” and she remembers as well the ruthless power of his mother Mrs. After she left she began writing her governess novel Agnes Grey, which Charlotte had read before starting Jane Eyre. A half year later, Anne Brontë became governess at Thorp Green Hall, where she was happier and remained for several years. Their mother persistently sides with the children and limits Agnes’ efforts to discipline them.
His sister Mary Ann, a six-year-old child, ignores her teacher, literally lying on the floor much of the time.
It opens with its eponymous heroine ironically recalling her happy anticipations: “How delightful it would be to be a governess! To go out into the world to enter upon a new life to act for myself to exercise my unused faculties to try my unknown powers.” In considering sources for John Reed, we have already met Agnes’ pupil Tom Bloomfield who introduces himself by showing her his trapped birds that he happily tortures. Her novel, Agnes Grey, recounts her disillusionment as she begins to learn what being a governess actually entails. When only a little more than eighteen years old, Anne served for nine months (April–December 1839) as governess for the Ingham family in charge of their two oldest children.
Beginning life as a governess was far more unpleasant for Charlotte Brontë and her sister Anne than it was for Jane Eyre.
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