Punishment

At the center of this poem is the bog body itself, described in gruesome detail for the audience by a voyeuristic speaker. The body is a symbol of cultural violence, particularly violence done to women, and the speaker’s reaction to the body—sexual and voyeuristic in its empathy—also perpetrates a type of violence upon the victim. The speaker describes the body as “little” (Line 27) and “undernourished” (Line 30), while also calling her “beautiful” (Line 31) and claiming to “almost love” (Line 33) her. The violence the body has taken, in life and death, is the focus of the poem, but the speaker’s affectionate description works to deceive the reader, making that violence itself seem beautiful and sexual in nature. The speaker’s description of the body is marked by reminders of the violence she has endured: “her shaved head / like a stubble of black corn, / her blindfold a soiled bandage, / her noose a ring” (Lines 17-20). Her body, preserved for centuries in the bog, becomes an immortalized monument to that fatal violence, which echoes in modern images of misogynistic punishments.