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Chapter 18: Mirth and Mourning
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Agnes Grey, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Education, Authority, and Class
Money vs. Love in Marriage
Women and Fulfillment
Power and Cruelty
Religion
Summary
Analysis
After Richard Grey’s funeral, Agnes, Mary, and their mother sit around the table and discuss their future. Though Mary asks their mother to come live with her and her new husband, their mother resolves to work while she can. She suggests that she and Agnes start a small school for boarders and day students. Agnes agrees to use her savings to rent a suitable house: she will give notice upon returning to Horton Lodge.
Agnes’s mother’s dilemma after her husband’s death underscores the limited “respectable” choices available to middle-class Victorian women: once her husband dies, she can either become a dependent on other family members or work in education—and that’s about all.
Themes
A letter arrives for Agnes’s mother. It’s from her father. She reads it, throws it down on the table, and tells Agnes and Mary that their grandfather has offered to support her and write Agnes and Mary into his will if she’ll acknowledge that she was wrong to have married Richard Grey in the first place and regrets it. She plans to write back that she in no way regrets her 30 years of marriage or the two daughters that resulted from it—but since her father is offering Agnes and Mary an inheritance, she asks what they think. They strongly support her decision. After their grandfather’s death, they eventually hear that he left all his money to their cousins.
Agnes has demonstrated that she values love and morality over money and status throughout the novel—particularly in her opposition to the marriage between Rosalie and rich, high-ranking, but immoral Sir Ashby. This scene emphasizes that Agnes learned these values from her parents and particularly her mother, who refuses to lie about regretting her loving marriage even in order to obtain economic security.
Themes
