Fact to Fiction: Anne Bronte Replicates La Trobe's Biblically Inspired Advice in Scenes from Agnes Grey

This paper contends that Anne Bronte, while a pupil at Roe Head School in Mirfield, was influenced by the Calvinistic teachings of the nearby Dewsbury circle of clergymen,(1) and became physically and spiritually ill because of her fears that she might be damned and never attain salvation; in addition, that she was greatly comforted by the advice of the Moravian priest James La Trobe and that she transferred much of their actual conversation into fictionalized scenes in Agnes Grey, her first novel. The opening paragraph of Agnes Grey reveals Anne's hope that she can write freely under cover of anonymity and hence lay bare her strong feelings against the hypocrisy and insincerity of certain clergy who practise exclusionism.(2)