WHILE MUCH OF THE CRITICAL DISCUSSION of Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey (1847) characterizes the novel as simplistic, conventional, and conservative, it is, in fact, intellectual, controversial, and highly original. In particular, Brontë challenges traditional Christian assumptions as she enters into debates which were seen to be reserved for the clergy alone. One of the novel's challenges to institutional Christianity centers around sermons. The formation of her novel as an exemplary sermon represents her entrance into an exclusively male genre of the time – theological treatises and handbooks on sermon style. As she wrote the novel, no major Christian institution in England allowed women to preach.There are a few minor exceptions. For example, some Primitive Methodist women preached throughout the nineteenth century (Chadwick 379). Women acted as ministers and preachers in the Society of Friends as early as the 1830s if not before (Chadwick 1: 422–23), and, largely because of the efforts of Catherine Booth, the Salvation Army allowed women to be ministers and to preach (Helsinger, Lauterbach, and Veeder 2: 180–83), although this occurred after Brontë's death. There was virtually no support within Christian institutions for women to enter into what John Ruskin, in “Of Queen's Gardens,” called that “one dangerous science for women,” theology (143). Thus, Brontë's decision to publicly state her opinions on preaching contravenes the parameters for a woman established and upheld by Christian institutions of her day.