Agness portrayal in The Garden of Nails

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Agnes is one of the main characters in the story, although her origins are not revealed. She is a very interesting person to observe and analyze. Not only because of her feelings towards the family and the social class, but also because of the hidden reasons for these feelings. Throughout the story those causes are not revealed, but there are lots of clues and one could make quite a few conclusions from different points of view. At first, the servant (who is also the narrator of the story) is presented as a very jealous person, who observes everything and creates the impression that she wants all that wealth and power for herself. She describes every little detail of the Vincensini’s home with a sort of a “dark” passion. She also vaguely implies that she thinks herself a woman with aristocratic notions when she describes what class is: ‘It is as instinct, an aristocratic feel for all that is best in this miserable world of sinners’ This sentence also suggests that Agnes is miserable, depressed, perhaps even a sinner (although everyone is a sinner, there are different – bigger or smaller sins, and who knows what her is). She is angry with everything in the world and mostly because of her position in society – her class. And she keeps flaming the Vincensini family, even their ancestors: ‘The men all fat oafs with fingers like turnips and expressions that would make a herd of cows look intelligent. And the women - well, they were the herd of cows, weren't they?’ She is quite vulgar, which actually shows her true class. This creates a bit of a contrast. Agnes talks about how the Vincensini’s are arrogant and not worthy of the upper-class society, and yet she thinks herself better than them but shows totally different things with her doings and sayings. A clue of her simple-mindedness is what she says about the archives at the Museum of Modern art - ‘… if it is an
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