Milli mála - 2022, Síða 114

MILLI MÁLA
Milli mála 14/1/2022 113
Abstract
“Suggestion of a life”: Destiny in
the North and the Reinvention of Agnes in
Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites
During her year in Iceland as an exchange student, the Australian
writer Hannah Kent became fascinated with the story of Agnes
Magnúsdóttir. Kent spent years researching Agnes and the Illugastaðir
murders in 1828. She wrote Burial Rites during her Ph.D. research
in Creative Writing and her objective was to work against the ste-
reotypes that characterised historical and fictional representations of
Agnes, and thereby present a more ambiguous portrait of her protag-
onist. Burial Rites is a revisionist and feminist historical novel, which
presents what Kent terms a “suggestion” of Agnes’s life story. Kent
relies on written records related to Agnes’s case, and these provide a
historical frame for the narrative, within which Agnes’s story is pre-
sented in a poetic first-person narration alongside brief sections with
outside perspectives on Agnes. Together these varied perspectives
deconstruct the persistent stereotype associated with Agnes. Burial
Rites is also very much a novel about Iceland and the North, and the
setting is integral to Kent’s portrayal of Agnes and her ill-fated life.
In many ways the book is a dark love letter to Iceland where the land-
scape, weather and nature are pivotal elements. These are forces that
shape and determine the lives of Kent’s characters, especially Agnes’s,
because even though landscape and nature grant some joy and solace
to Agnes they eventually turn against her, imprison her and bring
her towards her inevitable fate. Kent suggests a circular develop-
ment to Agnes’s story while nature and environment is described
in such a way as to foreshadow coming events; also, it is suggested
that weather and human destiny are inextricably linked. Finally, the
motif of dreams and portends is important in Kent’s representation
of Agnes’s story.
INGIBJÖRG ÁGÚSTSDÓTTIR