SOURCE: "Agnes Grey: 'Pillars of Witness' in 'The Vale of Life,"' in Anne Brontë's Radical Vision: Structures of Consciousness, English Literary Studies, 1994, pp. 39-70.

In the following essay, Berry surveys the imagery of Agnes Grey, evaluating its thematic significance and artistry.

"All true histories contain instruction," reads the opening sentence of Agnes Grey.'¹ This pointed assertion, linking truth with history and instruction, suggests a didacticism which, as Anne Brontë is careful to demonstrate at the outset, is tempered with an "entertaining" (3) or witty analysis of social structures. She addresses the reader directly in the opening paragraph, referring to the "kernel" of truth contained in the "nut" of her "history": a history which she thinks "might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others" (3). In this way Anne Brontë sets up the authentic base for her story and indicates a cogently defined balance between art and...