Although it was eventually disproved with advancements in technology, the woman’s body Seamus Heaney writes of in Punishment, suffered a fate that many suffered before and after her. Adultery in some states is illegal, in some countries deserving of jail time, and in a Biblical sense, punishable by death.
The woman’s body, that had been found in 1952, was thought to be over 2000 years old. It was believed that because of the condition she was found in, she had been ritually killed for breaking a law of the tribe. Heaney writes that this body must have been punished for adultery. A crime that women have always been punished for more than men. Perhaps, Heaney had this belief because of the way women were also punished by the Irish Republican Army for adultery. In both cases, women were shaven and tied up in some manner. This alone is an example of the extreme punishment women faced in two different time periods.
Jumping ahead to current time, we do not necessarily tar and feather women for committing adultery, but there is a definite inequality to how we treat men who have committed the same act. In the modern world, it is almost accepted that men will cheat on their wives and their wives will stay with them. It is plastered in almost every television drama that there is. This subcategory of toxic masculinity is growing. We nonchalantly brush off husbands cheating on their wives (like I am sure they did in the past too), but we continuously harass and judge the wives that cheat on their husbands.
Now, I am not by any means condoning cheating or saying that there should not be punishment. Should not everyone be accountable for their own actions in the same way though?
