Seamus Heaney’s, “Punishment”, is describing a well preserved corpse from the Iron age discovered in Northern Europe and Ireland in 1951 (Greenblatt). The corpse is of a young girl around fourteen years of age (Greenblatt). Heaney explains in “Punishment”, what this girl went through while she was being killed. She was being severely punished for being an adulteress. During the time period when this girl was living, people punished adulteress women by shaving their heads and running them out of the town or killing them (Greenblatt). For this young girl, “her shaved head/ like a stubble of black corn/…Little adulteress, / before they punished you / you were flaxen-haired / undernourished, and your / tar-black face was beautiful” (Greenblatt p.1098). The people punished her by shaving her head, tarring her, and stripping her. It is known that she was stripped because the fourth line of the poem states, “On her naked front” (Greenblatt p.1097). Because it was said she is undernourished, it is possible that she was run out of the town. However, the poem also says, “I can see her drowned / body in the bog, / the weighing stone, (Greenblatt p.1098). It is also possible that she was killed from drowning and not being undernourished. Most likely she was just an undernourished girl, but horrifically, the people punishing her drowned her. The “Betraying sisters” of the adulteress were sometimes shaved, stripped from their clothes, tarred, and handcuffed to railings as punishment (Greenblatt). Toward the end of the poem, Heaney speaks of the girl as if he witnessed her torment; “I who have stood dumb / when your betraying sisters, / cauled in tar, / wept by the railings (Greenblatt p.1098). The girl’s “betraying sisters” were punished as well, and they cried for her. Heaney gives memory to what happened for this young girl and he states, “I am the artful voyeur / of your brain’s exposed / and darkened combs / your muscles’ webbing / and all your numbered bones (Greenblatt p.1098). Heaney brings the ritualistic killing of the adulteress to life and show cases the horrific things done to the girl and her betraying sisters to humiliate these women for their acts.
Work Cited:
Greenblatt, Stephen, and Catherine Robson. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 10th ed., E, W.W. Norton, 2018.