ent. What is not empty of emotion is befouled by squalid memory, in Quoyle's case the memory of a horrible marriage in which he loved both unwisely and too well, and in Agnis's the memory of a quietly satisfactory domestic life that in its lesbian configuration owes more than a little to the fact that as an young girl Agnis had been raped repeatedly by her half-brother, Quoyle's father. Agnis remains quiet about that, too, though it appears to have marked her experience of the world.
Agnis's experience can be tracked in terms of the modern feminist social critique and an active feminist response to the found universe. The action of the character is important because it demonstrates what the critique per se can only articulate. Indeed, in The Shipping News, although the reader understands Agnis's state of mind, the fact is that her experience of powerlessness is so vivid and revolting that she never specifically articulates a critique of what must be viewed as her oppression by powerful social agents. Indeed, Quoyle finds out about his father's incestuous perversion from a local cousin. Agnis's action is rather different; as Klinkenborg points out, her return to Killick-Claw, the scene of the crime, is a form of defiance. It could also be said that her return is an enactment of articulation or a confrontation with the demons of the Nightmare Isles, as Quoyle calls them, which are for Agnis also the demons of directly experienced social oppression. It is in the nature of an instrumental appropriation of her past and into the bargain a compact with her future. It is consistent with Nietzsche's comment that historical reflection properly undertaken entails "looking to the past" with an eye on the future. Appropriately historical men(!), he explains, glance behind them,
only so that, from the process so far, they can learn to understand the present and to desire the future more vehemently; they have no idea that, despite their preoccu...