Episode 225: “Agnes Grey” by Anne Brontë, Ch. 6-11
The Literary Life Podcast
Angelina Stanford
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2024
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina and Thomas continue their series of discussions on Anne Brontë’s novel Agnes Grey. They open the conversation about this novel with some thoughts on the differences between Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre and Anne and Charlotte Brontë. Angelina poses the question as to whether this novel crosses the line into didacticism or if it stays within the purpose of the story and the art.
In discussing the education of Agnes’ charges in these chapters, Angelina has a chance to expand upon the upbringing of Victorian young women. She and Thomas discuss the position of the curate and Agnes’ spiritual seriousness, as well as the characters of Weston and Hatfield as foils for each other. Thomas closes out the conversation with a question as to whether Agnes Grey is as memorable a character as Jane Eyre or Catherine Earnshaw and why that is.
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Commonplace Quotes:
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts/ Is not the exactness of peculiar parts;/ ‘Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,/ But the joint force and full result of all.
Alexander Pope, from “An Essay on Criticism”
In any case, it is Charlotte Brontë who enters Victorian literature. The shortest way of stating her strong contribution is, I think, this: that she reached the highest romance through the lowest realism. She did not set out with Amadis of Gaul in a forest or with Mr. Pickwick in a comic club. She set out with herself, with her own dingy clothes and accidental ugliness, and flat, coarse, provincial household; and forcibly fused all such muddy materials into a spirited fairy-tale.
G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature
My Heart Leaps Up
By William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the man;
And I wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Book List:
Ten Novels and Their Authors by W. Somerset Maugham
1984 by George Orwell
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're going to. This is not just another book chat podcast. |
| 0:22.8 | Lifelongs, |
| 0:24.8 | joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks |
| 0:27.6 | for an ongoing conversation |
| 0:29.5 | about the skill and art of reading well. |
| 0:33.0 | Explore the lost intellectual tradition |
| 0:35.6 | and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. |
| 0:40.2 | Learn what books mean while delighting |
| 0:42.4 | in the sheer joy of imagination. |
| 0:45.0 | Each week we will rescue a story from the ivory tower |
| 0:49.0 | and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. |
| 0:53.6 | The literary life is for everyone, because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, |
| 0:57.9 | to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. |
| 1:03.5 | Join us for an ever unfolding discussion |
| 1:06.6 | of how stories will save the world. |
| 1:09.5 | This is the Literary Life Podcast. Welcome back to the literary life podcast. I'm Angelina Stamford and I am here with my trusty partner in crime in life and all the things. |
| 1:37.0 | Oh, that's me. That's you? Yes. |
| 1:40.0 | Very good. The ring on your finger, the world's tiniest handcuff on your finger indicates that you are the one. |
| 1:46.0 | That is my my my interesting lot in life. That's right. This is me trying to keep the mystery in the mysterious Mr Banks. |
| 1:53.0 | If you've been listening for a while, you know I'm no longer allowing him to introduce himself because |
| 1:58.8 | he doesn't introduce himself mysteriously enough. |
| 2:01.6 | No, no, falteringly I think. Today is the second episode in our |
... |
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