The glove’s outer skin and stripped inner self

The glove’s outer skin and stripped inner self is an image Agnes uses to understand William Shakespeare after he intervenes in a violent family confrontation. Its carefully stitched surface can cover and contain a hand, yet the glove’s making requires the removal of nearly everything that once gave the animal substance. The contrast lets Agnes perceive both the familiar husband she knows and a darker, divided presence within him.

The Image in the Yard

After William Shakespeare steps between his father and Edmond, Agnes carries the child out of the room. Later, in the yard, Edmond has recovered his good humor and feeds the chickens while Agnes holds a bowl of grain. William approaches, rests his head against hers, and puts his arms around her. In this quiet contact, Agnes recalls the cavernous landscape she once perceived within him. Her thoughts turn to the glove: its seams cross each finger, joining a skin that is not the wearer's, while its shape fits over and holds the hand.

Beauty and the Violence of Making

The image expands from the finished glove to the work that produces it. In the warehouse, skins are pulled and stretched almost to the point of tearing; in the workshop, tools cut and shape, grip and pinch. To make the glove useful, the glovemaker keeps the animal’s outer skin and discards its heart, bones, soul, spirit, blood, and entrails. Agnes sees a secret cruelty concealed in an object whose beauty and perfection depend on reducing an animal to its surface. The glove is therefore not merely a covering: its smooth fit carries the trace of what has been stripped away.

Division and the Impulse to Leave

As she watches Edmond scatter grain, Agnes imagines that if she pressed William’s hand she would perceive again the landscape she had sensed at their first meeting, but now also a dark, watchful presence and tools for gutting, flaying, and stealing the essence of a being. The thought turns the glove’s hidden violence into a warning about William’s inner division. Agnes suspects they should not remain where they are much longer and that they will soon have to leave and find another place.

When Agnes later revives the fire in the kitchen, she understands the division in domestic terms: William is one person in his own home and another in his parents’ house. At home, he is the man she knows and recognizes, the person she married. The glove’s two implications thus converge: it can cover and contain, but its polished exterior may conceal a more painful interior; likewise, Agnes’s familiarity with her husband coexists with her perception of a self altered by the divided loyalties of his family home.