“Like a Lamb Ripe for Slaughter”: Female Body, Law and “Domestic” Animals in Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites
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...
| Published in: | Gender Studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Sciendo
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1515/genst-2017-0006 https://doaj.org/article/6e4f2e7a0072405d8bca9b124428b136 |
| Summary: | 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. |
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