17 pages • 34 minutes read
Punishment
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Themes
The Artistic Voyeur
The most prominent theme in “Punishment” comes near the end of the poem, when the speaker identifies himself as “the artful voyeur” (Line 32) who observes with almost sexual fascination the bog body’s “brains exposed / and darkened combs” (Lines 33-34) and her “muscles’ webbing / and all [her] numbered bones” (Lines 35-36). While the poem could focus more wholly upon the bog body as a person, the tarred and feathered women of Northern Ireland, or the violence of the troubles, Heaney instead chooses to focus on the observant, artistic “I.” The first-person pronoun is conspicuous throughout the poem, and there is a clear voice commenting upon the bog body from the outset of the poem. However, halfway through “Punishment,” the focus shifts from a description of the body to a description of the first-person speaker. The speaker says to the body, “I almost love you / but would have cast, I know, / the stones of silence” (Lines 29-31).
The speaker openly describes himself as someone whose neutrality would have sentenced the woman in the bog to death, had the two of them lived contemporaneously. This admittance establishes Heaney’s chief criticism of himself and all other artists who create through the exploitation of others’ suffering. While the speaker, who shares many similarities with Heaney himself, writes about human suffering and violence, what does he do when actually faced with the realities of that violence in life? Heaney indicts his speaker for his lack of involvement. By calling the speaker literally “the artful voyeur” (Line 32), Heaney makes it clear that, in his view, artists who profit from the exploitation of human suffering, while failing to speak out against violence in their own communities, are no more than observers, liable in their neutrality for the continuance of human violence and suffering.
Violence, Past and Present
Like many of Heaney’s other poems, “Punishment” speaks to the constancy of violence. The human experience, in Heaney’s writing, is marked by destructive violence. In North, Heaney studies in verse the ways in which violence is constant by comparing and contrasting the violence that marked the lives of the ancient people who eventually became bog bodies, mummified in peat, and the ongoing violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Cycles of violence, and the repeated cycles of exploitation and voyeurism, dominate this poem.
The speaker states, “I can see her drowned / body in the bog, / the weighing stone,” (Lines 9-11) which emphasizes the literal actions of violence that led to the woman’s body ending up in the bog. Moreover, by referencing the modern acts of the IRA at the end of the poem, Heaney reiterates the continuance of the same type of violence; in both instances, women are punished harshly for some sort of sexual activity deemed deviant or against the interests of the community.
The speaker is literally an artist-voyeur of the bog body; in detail he describes her suffering, before and after death, remarking upon the condition of her body. Towards the end of the poem, the voyeuristic nature of the speaker is affirmed and critiqued when he describes the suffering of the tarred and feathered women of Northern Ireland. The speaker asserts that he is a viewer of the violence, a describer of the violence, and notably, when the violence takes place in his own community, the speaker does not act to stop it.
Revenge and Violence Against Women
Although only mentioned in support of other themes within the poem, there is a throughline of revenge and sexually-motivated violence against women in “Punishment.” The speaker describes the bog body in gruesome detail, making sure to point to sexual characteristics, such as her nipples and nakedness. The speaker uses denigrating terms to equate the value of the body with her sexualization and perceived sexual wrongs. By using terms of endearment like “Little adulteress” (Line 23) and “My poor scapegoat” (Line 28) Heaney ties the female body explicitly to male ownership and diminishes her personal value. The mention of the IRA’s tarring and feathering of Northern Irish women expands upon this concept: “when your betraying sisters, / cauled in tar, / wept by the railings” (Lines 38-40).
The women of Northern Ireland, tarred and feathered by the IRA as punishment for their sexual indiscretion with British soldiers, are also victims of male violence and biased social norms. They are punished for their sexual choices because, as women, their bodies are not theirs to wield as they wish. Rather, their bodies are the property of men, and by giving themselves sexually to the British soldiers, they have betrayed the men of their country. The punishment—tarring and feathering—is both painful and denigrating. The body in the bog is treated in much the same way; her sexual indiscretion is punished cruelly, and even in death, her body is to men something to be viewed and described—a thing to exploit, own, and punish.
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By Seamus Heaney
