ABSTRACT
George Moore wrote that Agnes Grey (1847) was ‘the most perfect prose narrative in English. . . . [It] is a narrative simple and beautiful as a muslin dress’ (Harrison and Stanford 227). Although somewhat exaggerated, Moore’s statement nevertheless captured certain of Bronte’s literary qualities. Agnes Grey, however, is also a feminist novel preoccupied not only with moral problems, but social ones as well. Bronte’s voice was raised against paltry salaries, poor working conditions, and offensive treatment accorded governesses; against society’s denigration of working women; against the legal status of married women who had to give over their dowries and fortunes to their husbands, thereby reducing them to slave status and keeping them virtual prisoners of their own homes. In Agnes Grey, Bronte pleaded for self-fulfillment for women and equality of the sexes.
