Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte : Was She Really A Good Teacher?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

The last time I read a book by a Bronte it was Wuthering Heights. I remember where I finished it too. Outside Matalan in Cardiff in December. Wife and daughter was doing some clothes/Christmas shopping and I was lumbered in to carry everything back to the car. Regular readers will know I consider clothes shopping with [insert family female here] to be hell on Earth so I was happy enough to read the novel.

And I loved it.

So now I come many years later to Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte where she writes about the problems faced by a governess to privileged children having been forced to do this due to family financial problems.

And as I was reading this book it occurred to me that a governess is mainly a teacher and you would have thought that it would be quite easy. But no. She can't seem to deal with these kids and spends a lot of the first half of the book moaning about it.

So if a teacher of thirty children in a class was reading it he/she would probably have thrown the book across the room in frustration. After all he/she would think what has she got to moan about?

Indeed away from her family and friends where she was brought up for the first half of the book she appears to be disliked by everyone whatever their social position. I therefore began to think that Agnes, as it's written in the first person, perhaps it's you.

Then halfway through the plot turns in a slightly different direction and you begin to start rooting for Aggy. That is until the end. When whilst you knew what the destination would be the route taken to get there is so contrived even Victorian readers would have probably shouted the equivalent of "Are you kidding me?!"

In conclusion then the question to be asked is whether this book would be remembered today if the author didn't have "Bronte" in her name.

Let's put it this way. She doesn't even gain a first step to reach the heights of Wuthering.

Until the next time.

Hooked On Classics Part One: Lorna Doone

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As I'm in this twilight zone state of preparing to move house but not actually moving yet my reading has for the moment been reduced to my Kindle. A factor that adds another extra profit to those people residing in the Amazon e jungle.

As I've explained before my Kindle can be spilt easily into three categories. Those books bought at full price (the smallest of the three), those bought as an Amazon "deal" and those, mainly classics which were free.

Can't deny that in many ways having a lot of classics on the Kindle is not just financially a bargain (which it is) but also helps me go through all of those books that have obtained "classic" status but hadn't got round to reading because of life, the universe and everything.

That doesn't mean to say it's necessarily a rewarding experience. In previous posts I've discussed how Call Of The Wild  by Jack London essentially lifted the plot from Black Beauty. Or how the dullness of D H Lawrence's Twilight In Italy bored me into submission (the only remarkable fact of this book being that it made Italians seem dull) before I could go to town on it's racism.

And so we come to the latest e book that I've just finished reading Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore. Definitely a novel where more often or not you will hear the word "classic" nearby like some sort of literary stalker.

The thing about Lorna Doone is this. If you take the plot line at it's most basic (Historical - for us - Romance set in a "wild" part of Britain) it is I think the closest classic book to Wuthering Heights written by a man.

My view of Lorna Doone is that if this was a football match it would have been a draw. Where this novel scores is in the description of its setting. You do feel that you're in the wild west (well South West .....Devon) in the late seventeenth century. Also the writing does drive you on. R D Blackmore does know how to tell a tale and I did want to continue turning (or in fact swiping) the page.

I said that it was the closest classic book to Wuthering Heights written by a man. It isn't however better. For a start Emily Bronte's novel is far more subtle and nuanced. There are shades of grey (not as in fifty) absent in Lorna Doone. It's the Wild South West where heroes and villains are (with one slight exception) clearly marked.

Also the male narrator's (John Ridd) opinion of most women is laughable in this day and age. He seems to treat them as tolerated pets that need to be controlled. The one exception is the eponymous Ms Doone herself. She is basically woman placed on a pedestal. Beautiful, graceful, devoted you have to ask if she is quite the catch how was it that she fell in love with a narrator who by his own admission is not handsome (remember that if you see a big/small screen adaptation).

So then a draw. Happy to have read it. Won't ever read it again.

I found myself afterwards on a slight artistic interlude when the next book on the great e unread turned out to Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries by the artist Albrecht Durer bought for my appreciation of the artistic value of having to pay nothing.

For a short book (read in half an hour) it really was a waste of time. This was less a travel journal and more of a ledger as he detailed what he bought and sold. As a writer Durer makes a great artist.

The next book to read is ....The Rainbow by D H Lawrence. Regular readers will know that along with Bridgend Labour Council and Arsenal football club D H Lawrence has become quite the villain in this blog. Still as Michael Palin has shown I'm quite capable of disliking one book by a writer and liking the next. So we live in hope.

Until the next time.