Baldridge (1993, p. 31) argues that Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë intentionally subverts the traditional Bildungsroman genre by depicting a heroine who cannot grow and develop. Combining Jungian Literary Criticism with Anne dying unmarried at 29, this essay conjectures one potential reason.  

The extent to which Agnes Grey is autobiographical remains unclear. However, it does reflect crucial aspects of Anne’s life, including her experience as an unhappy governess, a frequent motif in 19^th-century literature (Gilbert, 2015, p. 456). Carl Jung would not be surprised. He believed that the chosen motifs in narratives like Agnes Grey act as mirrors reflecting the author’s experiences of psychic maturation, a personal quest for meaning in narrative form (Rowland, 2019, p. 65). 

Agnes begins her journey with determination and agency by leaving home to become a governess with the Bloomfield family. However, she quickly becomes disillusioned and fails to make meaningful progress or learn from her experiences. Despite displaying tenacity and moral integrity in adversity, she remains stuck in familiar patterns of disappointment – (Brontë, 2012, p. 53) – “the next family must be different.” They were not. Rinse and repeat, as they say, through the next approximately 140 pages with the Murray family. Luckily, Agnes is rescued by marriage to Mr Weston, the typical ending of the ‘governess novel’ (Gilbert, 2015, p. 456). 

I suggest that the chosen motif unfolding in Brontë’s narrative, Agnes Grey, maybe that which Jung knew as ‘The Kore’, which harkens back to the ancient Greek myth of Demeter, whose young maiden daughter was rudely snatched and raped by Hades, God of the Underworld, whilst picking flowers in a meadow with her friends. This myth is crucial for Jungians to understand the transition from maiden to mother, two archetypal components of feminine psychic maturation (Makowski, 1985, p. 73-74). 

To achieve this crucial transition, the young woman must surrender to the ‘animus’ – ‘ a transpersonal ravishing penetrator who breaks into her consciousness, overpowers her, transports her outside herself, connects her to her instinctual nature, and fundamentally changes her personality’ (Baumlin et al., 1997, p. 25). 

Agnes sets herself up for this transition by falling in love with Mr Weston. But other than ‘praying that my hopes might not again be crushed’ (Brontë (2012, p. 201), feeling nothing more than an ‘indefinite dread’ as he prepares to propose (Brontë (2012, p. 205-6), and rushing through the whole of her married life in five scant paragraphs, Agnes seemingly failed to surrender to the ‘animus’, to allow the ’phallic thorn’ to ‘pierce the field of self-absorption’ (Baumlin et al., 1997, p. 25).

Might it be that, like Agnes, Anne Brontë also remained in the maiden stage of feminine psychic maturation? We know little about Anne’s romantic life; however, she reportedly had feelings for Reverend Weightman (Ratchford 1948, p. 74), her father’s first curate who may have inspired Agnes’ Mr Weston. There is no evidence suggesting their relationship was intense enough for him to serve as the necessary ‘ravishing penetrator’ or ‘phallic thorn.

So, in summary, I suggest that, although we will never be sure, it is interesting to consider that Agnes could have little development and growth in a Jungian sense because there had been little for her creator, Anne.

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