Summary Of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites
Set against the austere Icelandic terrain, Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites delves into the life of a condemned woman, Agnes Magnusdottir and explores how the people who live and work with Agnes transition from feeling antipathy to sympathise with her and her plight. Structurally the text marks this transition and the six months of her stay at the Kornsa farm also allows Kent to frame the transition metaphorically through the changing seasons. Moreover, By granting Agnes the ability to voice her view – readers can sympathize with her fate as a powerless woman in a patriarchal milieu that punishes intelligence when it undermines the subservient and dependent archetype that masculine arrogance permits. Integrated within a third person narrative the first-person reflections allow readers to judge Agnes outside the dehumanizing
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narrative that is the official perspective of her. The slow thawing of the attitudes of those who were initially prepared to condemn Agnes guides readers’ feelings for her as we are also privy to her life story which is uncovered in stages as Agnes reveals herself and her circumstances to Toti and those in the Kornsa farm who hear her stories. The slow unfolding of her story underpins the structure of the text and acts as a metaphor for how Agnes reveals her true self, which becomes the prevailing narrative that stands in opposition to the one that judges her purely on an act without knowing the circumstances around it. Thus, Kent pursues to shed light on how Agnes’s choices cannot be blamed on Agnes herself but is also due to her unforgiving society that punishes those who are underprivileged.
Kent juxtaposes the prevailing societal perceptions of Agnes of a murderess with her internal voice and first person narration to challenge the misogynistic stereotype of clever women to evoke sympathy for her. The novel opens with Agnes’s voice.” those who are not dragged to their deaths cannot understand how the heart grows hard and sharp until it is a nest of rocks with only an empty egg in it.” that established her as a victim prompting empathy for her. By contrasting this with the perspective of society and associating society’s portrayal of Agnes as a murderess and a witch with Agnes’s dehumanization “I feel the same as when I was little and hungry, as though bones are growing larger in my body, as if my skeleton is about to shiver out of me.” Kent positions readers to question who the real monsters are. When at Kornsa even Toti and Margret are offended by the visible signs of abuse on Agnes and respond aggressively to her jailors. “Every time I said something they would change
my words and throw it back to me like an insult, or an accusation”. So while these individuals are initially repulsed by Agnes and what she has been accused of doing, their response to her dehumanization reminds the audience that despite Agnes’s crimes she is still a human being. Characters around Agnes help to shape the audience’s initial perceptions of Agnes being ‘an inhumane witch’, evidently a confident label attached as a consequence of her act of ‘murder’. Margret and Toti are made aware that Agnes is a ‘murderess’ and each respond with outrage and weariness respectively. “There was an intensity to her revulsion that seemed fired by something more than resentment.” The fact that she is responsible for the deaths of two young men is an undeniable fact which establishes ground for which they are to treat her, nothing more than a ’criminal’, a ‘prisoner’ who will work like a dog’ as well as to ‘save’ her and ‘guide her home’. The simile, ‘work like a dog’ reinforces her dehumanization. The derogative claim that she is ‘stirring up murder’ is only objectively truthful in the sense that she is responsible for the death of men. Audiences are led to believe that her murder makes her automatically ‘a burning farm’, ‘a knife’, ‘blood’, everything; these terms are all synonymous with the name Agnes. Kent urges the audience to contemplate Agnes’s thoughts as the novel juxtaposes first person – Agnes’s perspective – and third person for the surrounding characters. In this way, a special connection is made with Agnes forcing audiences to consider her point of view and internal voice through the events that transpire.
By having Agnes tell her own story Kent challenges the official record of her story that is marked by a single act and reinforces that to understand a person you need to know the factors that gave rise to their choices. Story telling evokes empathy because we know the circumstances that lead to the death of Fridrick and Natan. The events cannot be understood in a vacuum but rather as flowing from a series of events and experiences that mitigate the labels that define Agnes through the act alone. In this way the unfolding of Agnes’s story is the main driver of the plot and thus Kent’s structural device that allows the audience as another member of the audience that is made privy to Agnes’ story to see her outside the official portrayal of her. The recount of Agnes’s life prior to the murder as manifested in Assistant Reverend Toti’s visits in addition to the insight into how she appears to outsiders hopes to question the fact-based view of Agnes. Toti is informed that she has ‘no family’ and ‘may as well have been listed as an orphan’. She states that ‘to know a person has done, and to know who a person is, are two different things’ as people make mistakes and ‘actions lie’. The extent to which the audience agrees with this statement could determine their view of Agnes, as she is convicted of a crime that is so unforgiving ‘they must steal her breath’. The high modality of ‘must’ suggests no compromise and emphasises the inevitability of her death sentence.
The transformation undergone by Agnes, demonstrated by the shift in characters’ attitudes towards her help to parallel the reader’s response to her. At the beginning of Burial Rites, Margret is uneasy in Agnes’s presence for fear that she will ‘kill them in their sleep’; in contrast, nearing the time of her execution, Margret mutters, ‘it’s not right… it wasn’t her fault’. The dramatic progression in their relationship as a result of the stories Agnes has told, the ‘maid’ work she has carried out and also the important role she played in assisting the birth of a Roslin’s child, allows Margret to realise that ‘[Agnes]is not a monster’ as she had previously assumed. This is markedly symbolised as Margret places the silver brooch on the bodice of Agnes’s execution apparel, the same silver brooch she was accused of stealing earlier on. The impact of this change is clear as the audience are forced to consider their position in relation to the initial views of Agnes compared to Agnes whom the audience is now more informed about.
Yet despite these transformation Agne’s fate at the hands of a brutal and unyielding patriarchal justice underscores the fixity of her fate and man’s inhumanity to man. Kent conveys this metaphorically in the harsh Icelandic landscape and the depiction of the 40 men who are witnesses to her execution in terms of the ravens, harbingers of death. structurally the novel ends on the historical documents that attest to the fact that Agnes cannot escape her awful and unjust fate and thus magnifies readers’ sympathy . To catalyse a life’s end after a silent moving of lips and an understanding of ‘what he was trying to say’ do not deem her acts righteous though she might have been compelled to ‘knife’ him. This account of events, given through Agnes’s eyes, are constructed to remove the blame from her to the pressure of the situation; her being ‘overwhelmed with gratitude’ and ‘forgiveness’ in the final moments of Natan’s life as he regarded her only serve to defend futile reason as ultimately, as Fridrick states, ‘Agnes, you’ve killed him.’ A finality is conveyed in this short sentence, suggesting it is a detail that cannot be ignored and she becomes the ‘murderess’ once again. According to the official record Agnes is a murderess whose sentence and execution were expressions of justice. However, Kent challenges this portrayal through structural elements in her novel, primarily the juxtaposition of Agnes’s voice and her first person narration that allows the audience to hear her version of events. The slow thawing of the icy attitudes towards her through experience and storytelling that allows the story to unfold in stages marking both the transition in attitude of the characters in the text and the reader with them.
Kent utilises not only the change in judgements and thus the relationship within the reader and Agnes but also the morality of ending the men’s lives as a means through which the ambiguity through her character is achieved. Whilst this help to achieve Hannah Kent’s purpose to an assured extent, the contradictory stances Hannah Kent directs audiences to take serve to ascertain a discomfort or confusion associated with Agnes’s presence. This contributes to a firm impression of Agnes as someone who is perhaps more ‘human’ than what ‘some of these publications’ might claim and therefore somewhat diminish the ambiguity that Kent tries to achieve.
narrative that is the official perspective of her. The slow thawing of the attitudes of those who were initially prepared to condemn Agnes guides readers’ feelings for her as we are also privy to her life story which is uncovered in stages as Agnes reveals herself and her circumstances to Toti and those in the Kornsa farm who hear her stories. The slow unfolding of her story underpins the structure of the text and acts as a metaphor for how Agnes reveals her true self, which becomes the prevailing narrative that stands in opposition to the one that judges her purely on an act without knowing the circumstances around it. Thus, Kent pursues to shed light on how Agnes’s choices cannot be blamed on Agnes herself but is also due to her unforgiving society that punishes those who are underprivileged.
Kent juxtaposes the prevailing societal perceptions of Agnes of a murderess with her internal voice and first person narration to challenge the misogynistic stereotype of clever women to evoke sympathy for her. The novel opens with Agnes’s voice.” those who are not dragged to their deaths cannot understand how the heart grows hard and sharp until it is a nest of rocks with only an empty egg in it.” that established her as a victim prompting empathy for her. By contrasting this with the perspective of society and associating society’s portrayal of Agnes as a murderess and a witch with Agnes’s dehumanization “I feel the same as when I was little and hungry, as though bones are growing larger in my body, as if my skeleton is about to shiver out of me.” Kent positions readers to question who the real monsters are. When at Kornsa even Toti and Margret are offended by the visible signs of abuse on Agnes and respond aggressively to her jailors. “Every time I said something they would change
my words and throw it back to me like an insult, or an accusation”. So while these individuals are initially repulsed by Agnes and what she has been accused of doing, their response to her dehumanization reminds the audience that despite Agnes’s crimes she is still a human being. Characters around Agnes help to shape the audience’s initial perceptions of Agnes being ‘an inhumane witch’, evidently a confident label attached as a consequence of her act of ‘murder’. Margret and Toti are made aware that Agnes is a ‘murderess’ and each respond with outrage and weariness respectively. “There was an intensity to her revulsion that seemed fired by something more than resentment.” The fact that she is responsible for the deaths of two young men is an undeniable fact which establishes ground for which they are to treat her, nothing more than a ’criminal’, a ‘prisoner’ who will work like a dog’ as well as to ‘save’ her and ‘guide her home’. The simile, ‘work like a dog’ reinforces her dehumanization. The derogative claim that she is ‘stirring up murder’ is only objectively truthful in the sense that she is responsible for the death of men. Audiences are led to believe that her murder makes her automatically ‘a burning farm’, ‘a knife’, ‘blood’, everything; these terms are all synonymous with the name Agnes. Kent urges the audience to contemplate Agnes’s thoughts as the novel juxtaposes first person – Agnes’s perspective – and third person for the surrounding characters. In this way, a special connection is made with Agnes forcing audiences to consider her point of view and internal voice through the events that transpire.
By having Agnes tell her own story Kent challenges the official record of her story that is marked by a single act and reinforces that to understand a person you need to know the factors that gave rise to their choices. Story telling evokes empathy because we know the circumstances that lead to the death of Fridrick and Natan. The events cannot be understood in a vacuum but rather as flowing from a series of events and experiences that mitigate the labels that define Agnes through the act alone. In this way the unfolding of Agnes’s story is the main driver of the plot and thus Kent’s structural device that allows the audience as another member of the audience that is made privy to Agnes’ story to see her outside the official portrayal of her. The recount of Agnes’s life prior to the murder as manifested in Assistant Reverend Toti’s visits in addition to the insight into how she appears to outsiders hopes to question the fact-based view of Agnes. Toti is informed that she has ‘no family’ and ‘may as well have been listed as an orphan’. She states that ‘to know a person has done, and to know who a person is, are two different things’ as people make mistakes and ‘actions lie’. The extent to which the audience agrees with this statement could determine their view of Agnes, as she is convicted of a crime that is so unforgiving ‘they must steal her breath’. The high modality of ‘must’ suggests no compromise and emphasises the inevitability of her death sentence.
The transformation undergone by Agnes, demonstrated by the shift in characters’ attitudes towards her help to parallel the reader’s response to her. At the beginning of Burial Rites, Margret is uneasy in Agnes’s presence for fear that she will ‘kill them in their sleep’; in contrast, nearing the time of her execution, Margret mutters, ‘it’s not right… it wasn’t her fault’. The dramatic progression in their relationship as a result of the stories Agnes has told, the ‘maid’ work she has carried out and also the important role she played in assisting the birth of a Roslin’s child, allows Margret to realise that ‘[Agnes]is not a monster’ as she had previously assumed. This is markedly symbolised as Margret places the silver brooch on the bodice of Agnes’s execution apparel, the same silver brooch she was accused of stealing earlier on. The impact of this change is clear as the audience are forced to consider their position in relation to the initial views of Agnes compared to Agnes whom the audience is now more informed about.
Yet despite these transformation Agne’s fate at the hands of a brutal and unyielding patriarchal justice underscores the fixity of her fate and man’s inhumanity to man. Kent conveys this metaphorically in the harsh Icelandic landscape and the depiction of the 40 men who are witnesses to her execution in terms of the ravens, harbingers of death. structurally the novel ends on the historical documents that attest to the fact that Agnes cannot escape her awful and unjust fate and thus magnifies readers’ sympathy . To catalyse a life’s end after a silent moving of lips and an understanding of ‘what he was trying to say’ do not deem her acts righteous though she might have been compelled to ‘knife’ him. This account of events, given through Agnes’s eyes, are constructed to remove the blame from her to the pressure of the situation; her being ‘overwhelmed with gratitude’ and ‘forgiveness’ in the final moments of Natan’s life as he regarded her only serve to defend futile reason as ultimately, as Fridrick states, ‘Agnes, you’ve killed him.’ A finality is conveyed in this short sentence, suggesting it is a detail that cannot be ignored and she becomes the ‘murderess’ once again. According to the official record Agnes is a murderess whose sentence and execution were expressions of justice. However, Kent challenges this portrayal through structural elements in her novel, primarily the juxtaposition of Agnes’s voice and her first person narration that allows the audience to hear her version of events. The slow thawing of the icy attitudes towards her through experience and storytelling that allows the story to unfold in stages marking both the transition in attitude of the characters in the text and the reader with them.
Kent utilises not only the change in judgements and thus the relationship within the reader and Agnes but also the morality of ending the men’s lives as a means through which the ambiguity through her character is achieved. Whilst this help to achieve Hannah Kent’s purpose to an assured extent, the contradictory stances Hannah Kent directs audiences to take serve to ascertain a discomfort or confusion associated with Agnes’s presence. This contributes to a firm impression of Agnes as someone who is perhaps more ‘human’ than what ‘some of these publications’ might claim and therefore somewhat diminish the ambiguity that Kent tries to achieve.