Tag: Anne Bronte

Six Degrees of Separation from  The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden to Cat Among the Pigeons

Published on by Margaret21 Comments

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we start with  The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden, the Women’s Prize Winner for Fiction 2025. This is Amazon’s description:

It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother’s country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep – as a guest, there to stay for the season…

In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.

First link: I really didn’t know how to start this chain, until I remembered that the cover of Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte also has doors, although they are closed doors as opposed to the open doors on The Safekeep. This is a novel about a young woman, a governess and her experiences working for two families in Victorian England. Agnes is the younger daughter of an impoverished clergyman. Her parents had married against her mother’s family’s wishes and when their fortune was wrecked Agnes determines to help out by working as a governess. It gives a very clear picture of the life of a governess, with all its loneliness, frustrations, insecurities and depressions.

I am staying with doors for the second link, although they are not shown not on the cover, but in the title, with Doors Open by Ian Rankin. This was the first Rankin book wrote after he retired John Rebus in Exit Music. It’s about an art heist – planned by Mike Mackenzie, a self-made man, rich and bored with life, Robert Gissing, the head of Edinburgh’s College of Art and Allan Crickshank a banker with a passion for art that he cannot afford to buy on his salary. Between them they devise a plan to steal some of the most valuable paintings from the National Gallery of Scotland on the day that buildings normally closed to the public throw open their doors and invite them in.

My Third link is Exit Music by Ian Rankin, the 17th Inspector Rebus novel.  The Crime Thriller Award for  Author of the Year 2008 was awarded to Ian Rankin for this book. It marked the end of an era as Rebus came to the end of his career. At the beginning of this book Rebus is 10 days from his retirement and is anxious to tie up all the loose ends in his current cases, trying to get DS Siobhan Clarke interested in them. So when the body of the dissident Russian poet Alexander Todorov is found dead this is Rebus’s last case. He throws himself into the investigation, desperate to take his mind off the end of his career.

Which brings me rather obviously to my fourth link Exit Lines by Reginald Hill, a Dalziel and Pascoe murder mystery. In this one there are three elderly victims who all died violently one cold and storm-racked November night. A drunken Dalziel is a suspect in one as it seems he was driving the car that hit an elderly cyclist. The plot is intricate, with each separate case being linked together. I thought it was an excellent crime fiction novel which kept me guessing until the end.

My Fifth link is also about a murder that took place during a stormy night. It’s The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean. Alexander Seaton is a schoolteacher in Banff. It’s set in 17th century Scotland, mainly in the town of Banff, where on a stormy night Patrick Davidson, the local apothecary’s assistant collapses in the street. The next morning he is found dead in the school house of Alexander Seaton, a failed minister, now a schoolteacher

My sixth link is about another schoolteacher, this time a headmistress, Miss Bulstrode in Agatha Christie’s novel Cat Among the Pigeons. She is the head of an exclusive and expensive girls’ school, Meadowbank, in England, said to be based on her daughter Rosalind’s school. Like Miss Brodie, Miss Bulstrode has built a reputation for excellence. But disaster strikes when two of the teachers, Miss Springer, the new Games Mistress and the History and German teacher, Miss Vansittart are murdered. Rather late in the day Hercules Poirot is called in to investigate their deaths.

My chain is mostly made up of two of my favourite genres, historical fiction and crime fiction. It went from a governess to a headmistress with murder mysteries in between. What is in your chain?

Next month (September 6, 2025), we’ll start with the winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Ghost Cities by Siang Lu.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, published in 1847, is a deeply moral novel about a young woman, a governess and her experiences working for two families in Victorian England. Agnes is the younger daughter of an impoverished clergyman. Her parents had married against her mother’s family’s wishes and when their fortune was wrecked Agnes determines to help out by working as a governess.

The first family she works for are the Bloomfields. Mrs Bloomfield tells Agnes her children are clever and very apt to learn. In fact they are terrible children, utterly spoilt and cruel. I found their brutality shocking, the more so since Anne was writing from her own experiences. One of the most vivid scenes is where Agnes kills a brood of nestlings to prevent Tom Bloomfield from torturing them.

Agnes is treated like a servant, rather than as a governess. She has no authority over the children and is not allowed to discipline them much as she would like to. Her attempts to improve their wild behaviour by quoting Bible texts and moral instruction have no effect on the children’s behaviour. As Agnes’s mother has told her that people do not like to be told of their children’s faults she kept silent about them and despite her best efforts she failed to make any impression on them:

But either the children were so incorrigible, the parents so unreasonable, or myself so mistaken in my views, or so unable to carry them out, that my best intentions and most strenuous efforts seemed productive of no better result than sport to the children, dissatisfaction to their parents, and torment to myself.

Her second post with the Murrays is little better – her charges are two teenage girls, who are just as spoilt as the younger children, wilful and determined to have their own way and two younger boys who are rough and unruly. Fortunately the boys are soon packed off to school and she only has to cope with sisters.

Both families are portrayed as wealthy, snobbish and totally lacking in any regard for Agnes. The only glimmer of hope comes through her friendship with Edward Weston, but even then Rosalie, the older daughter, is determined to make him fall in love with her. But surely Edward will not be deceived by Rosalie’s scheming ways? Agnes is gentle and self-effacing, never making her feelings known and it seems as though she is destined for a miserable life. Although she loves Edward she is totally unable to give any indication of her feelings towards him. Things seem to get even worse after her father’s death and she has to leave the Murrays – and Edward. However, Snap the dog plays his part in bringing some joy into Agnes’s life.

Agnes Grey vividly portrays the class distinctions of Victorian society, the position of women in that society from both the working and the middle classes through the first-person narrative. Above all it gives a very clear picture of the life of a governess, with all its loneliness, frustrations, insecurities and depressions. The characters, for the most part are well drawn, (the minor characters are one-dimensional) and I liked Agnes’s unspoken thoughts, eg. when told to go to the schoolroom immediately because the young ladies were waiting for her  she thinks, ‘Climax of horror! actually waiting for their governess.!!!’

Reading Agnes Grey has made me keen to re-read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, for one thing to compare the two governesses. It’s been years since I read Jane Eyre, and my memory is that it is a much more dramatic novel (certainly it is much longer).

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 449 KB
  • Print Length: 155 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0812967135
  • Publisher: Modern Library (18 Dec 2007)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Source: My own copy
  • My Rating: 3/5

Classics Challenge – April Prompt: the Book Cover

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Katherine at November’s Autumn hosts the Classics Challenge. This month’s focus is the Book Cover. The old and worn adage of never judging a book by its cover is partly true but a book cover tells the reader a lot about what’s inside you can usually tell what genre it is or what time period it takes place in.

What are your first impressions as you look at the cover? Does the book cover have an aspect that reflects the character, setting, or plot of the novel?  If you could have designed the book cover what would you have chosen?

Currently I’m reading Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte on my Kindle. I knew nothing about it before I began reading. There is no information on the Kindle e-book about the cover illustration and I don’t think it gives many clues about the book.

 My first impression on looking at the cover was that the character of Agnes Grey may have been a lady’s maid in a large household. However, I soon discovered that she is the impoverished daughter of a clergyman and she is employed as a governess to the unruly and spoilt children of wealthy families.

The cover does reflect the setting of the novel in Victorian times, although not the position Agnes has in the household – she is not a servant.  But it does reflect Agnes’s character as she is demure, gentle and rather timid. I’ve not finished the book yet, but so far Agnes has been totally unable to control the awful children in her charge and is not given any authority to reprimand them from their parents. The lone figure on the cover reflects the position in which Agnes finds herself – alone and unsupported by her employers.

If I could have designed the book cover I think I would have chosen a similar scene, but would have chosen one showing a governess and the children.