Two Young Sisters example essay topic

Anne Bronte is often overlooked in favour of her sisters Emily and Charlotte - the former for her unprecedented power, the latter for her daring met with reserve. Anne is in many ways the 'other' Bronte - less is known of her, very little survives of her, and less attention is paid her. All we really have of her is her writing - her two novels, 'The Tenant of Wild fell Hall' and 'Agnes Grey', and numerous poems. Agnes Grey is Anne's second and last novel - she died aged 28 of the same consumption that killed her brother and sister Emily.

It is a placid, sanguine little novel - it contains little of the verve of Wuthering Heights nor the genius of Jane Eyre, but it is in its own way brilliant as a melancholy description of Anne's own experiences as an educated though poor woman forced into the profession of governance. Agnes, like Anne, is depicted as a poor Pastor's daughter, and a change in circumstances pushes her happy family into dire straits. A naive young woman, Agnes suggests to her family that she seeks a position. They are unhappy about this but with her insistence, allow her to enter the home of the Bloomfield's, to take charge of their young children. Her enthusiasm and hopefulness is soon dashed when it becomes apparent that she is to be treated with contempt, allowed little scope for discipline and then denigrated for not keeping control, and detested by everyone in the household. This is her first experience of what it is like to be a governess - and she realises that she will never be able to exercise her good intentions whilst in her unhappy role in life.

Her next job takes her further afield and into no less a disagreeable place. This time her charges are two young sisters, and she struggles to impart some sort of values onto them. She fails again - these young girls are in flirtatious and uncouth, and disregard everything Agnes teaches them. It seems a hopeless cause. By this time the depressed young governess has given up any hope of ever being self-sufficient or of finding happiness.

But a happy ending is in sight - a chance of being valued by someone dear to her. Can a woman not esteemed a beauty, nor endowed with wealth, still find her prince? This is a story of woe that ends happily - this would mean little if not for the fact that all the Bronte sisters died so young, and struggled to find happy endings for themselves. The fact that in their imaginations dowdy governesses could find happiness is important. What they give us is the fact that young women growing up isolated and in intellectual abandon could still leave their mark, could still dream and could still change the world in their own subtle ways.