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Published: May 28, 2024, 5:02 a.m.

Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and the continuation of our series on Anne Bront\xeb\u2019s Agnes Grey. Angelina and Thomas open with their commonplace quotes which lead into the book discussion. Angelina kicks it off with a comparison between the work of the Bront\xebs and Jane Austen\u2019s writing which will continue throughout the conversation. Thomas and Angelina also look at the expectations of Victorians for courtship and marriage, the ways Anne Bront\xeb weaves this tale as a variation on other themes, the true woman versus the false woman, and more!

Check out the schedule for the podcast\u2019s summer episodes on our Upcoming Events page.

In August, Angelina Stanford will guide us through the world of\xa0Harry Potter\xa0as she shows us its literary influences and its roots in the literary tradition. You can sign up for that class or any of the HHL Summer Classes here. Sign up for the newsletter at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to stay in the know about all the exciting new things we have coming up!

Commonplace Quotes:

The ideal of education is that we should learn all that it concerns us to know, in order that thereby we may become all that it concerns us to be. In other words, the aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values. Values are facts apprehended in their relation to each other, and to ourselves. The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.

William Ralph Inge, from The Church in the World

But while Emily Bront\xeb was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and while Charlotte Bront\xeb was at best like that warmer and more domestic thing, a house on fire\u2013they do connect themselves with the calm of George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would have felt rather ill if they had seen the things they foreman. This notion of a hazy anticipation of after history has been absurdly overdone: as when men connect Chaucer with the Reformation; which is like connecting Homer with the Syracusan Expedition. But it is to some extent true that all these great Victorian women had a sort of unrest in their souls. And the proof of it is that\u2026 it began to be admitted by the great Victorian men.

G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature

The Recommendation

By\xa0Richard Crashaw

These houres, and that which hovers o\u2019re my End,  
Into thy hands, and hart, lord, I commend.  
 
Take Both to Thine Account, that I and mine  
In that Hour, and in these, may be all thine.  
 
That as I dedicate my devoutest Breath          
To make a kind of Life for my lord\u2019s Death,  
 
So from his living, and life-giving Death,  
My dying Life may draw a new, and never fleeting Breath.

Book List:

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bront\xeb

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Emma by Jane Austen

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

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