[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_04

Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte, 1847

At 15, I went crazy for "Jane Eyre". At 18, I became a huge fan of "Wuthering Heights"; also thanks to George Bataille's essay, which placed the author of “Wuthering Heights” in the top 5 of the masters of literary cruelty, removing the book from the female horizon of novels and returning it to the Great Classics (male horizon). At 20, I discovered that “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre” had not been written by the same person but by two sisters with the same surname and names. Sigh! In the cheap Italian translations I laid my hands upon, the names were dotted and not written in total, so I hadn't noticed that the letters differed! What were the chances that two women had written Victorian novels with the same surname?

I had to reach 30 to discover that there was a third sister, Anne.

I discovered her while reading Charlotte's correspondence, and from the way her sister described her, I immediately understood that her writings were not worth reading. Without an authentic voice, Charlotte presented Anne as a translucent, almost insignificant creature, the smallest and most fragile of the family. In this spirit, I purchased a copy of “Agnes Grey”: with prejudice, driven only by an enormous sense of duty (Anne Bronte was a piece of the puzzle that I was missing). I was sure I would find a boring novel, a cornucopia of clichés and mannered dialogues, an attempt to emulate Emily's great passions or Charlotte's intrigues. In short, it is a lousy copy made by a little girl who died before reaching artistic maturity. Instead, right from the start, I understood I was wrong: “But Mama, I am above eighteen and quite able to take care of myself and others too. You do not know half the wisdom and prudence I possess because I have never been tried.[...] You think, because I always do as you bid me, I have no judgment; but only try me - that is all I ask - and you shall see what I can do”.

Agnes' voice is the voice of Anne, the youngest and underestimated sister, but it is also the voice of the gender condition of women as eternal minors. The last of the Bronte sisters is the only one to sing from a different hymn sheet; her voice is still solid and contemporary (“If I could always be young, I would always be single,” says one of the female characters—even too modern!).

“I want to tell the truth,” Agnes repeats throughout the entire novel, and the book tells the truth as very few other novels have done: there are no adulterous drunkards who redeem themselves thanks to the protagonist's virtue, nor Byronic heroes who turn their love into a curse because of a love that ended badly. Was it a dig at the male characters created by her sisters? Of course, it is.

There is the story of a young woman who dreams of emancipation in 1847 and clashes with her time's obtuseness, prejudices, and difficulties. “How delightful it would be to go out into the world,” says Agnes, “to enter upon a new life; to act for me; to exercise my unused faculties; to try my unknown powers.” Agnes knows that dreams are far from reality, but she wants to try to reach them anyway, not by sublimating herself into impossible love stories,

but by committing herself without idealizing life.