SOURCE: "Anne Brontë: The Woman Writer as Moralist," in Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Brontë Sisters as Early-Victorian Female Novelists, Harvard University Press, 1966, pp. 49-85.

In the following excerpt, Ewbank comments on the unadorned style of Agnes Grey then contrasts the work with several other "governess novels" of the same period in order to discover the uniqueness of its theme.

'All true histories contain instruction.' Thus the first sentence of Agnes Grey, and here we have the link between the intention of the novel and the technique Anne Brontë used in writing it. There is no attempt to make the sugar hide the pill: in the first paragraph we are told that the book 'might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others' . A few chapters later, the purpose is whetted, as we are reminded that 'my design, in writing the last few pages, was...