“Like a Lamb Ripe for Slaughter”: Female Body, Law and “Domestic” Animals in Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites

• Published in: Gender Studies
• Main Author: Petković, Danijela
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Walter de Gruyter GmbH 2016
• Subjects: Gender Studies; Hannah; Slaughter; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/genst-2017-0006; http://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/genst/15/1/article-p74.xml; https://www.sciendo.com/article/10.1515/genst-2017-0006

Abstract The subject matter of this paper is the interplay of the female body, law and the technologies of “domestic” animals in the novel Burial Rites (2013), a fictionalised biography of the last woman executed in Iceland. Drawing consistent parallels between the convicted woman and animals - lambs in the “killing pen” in particular - Hannah Kent problematises long-standing human institutions and traditions such as law, death sentence, patriarchy and the (ab)use of animals. Moreover, she demonstrates that “the animal” and “the criminal” are mutually supportive socio-legal constructs realised on the bodies of sentient beings via identical technologies.