Annotation In Boland

In addition, Boland has deliberately selected words to use throughout her poem to describe a war raging against the speaker's own body. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker describes herself stating, "Flesh is heretic/ My body is a witch / I am burning it" (lns 1-3). By describing her body as a "witch" and as "heretic" she personifies her body with evil qualities. Not just evil, but dangerously against religious piety. She continues with the same image of burning in the fifth stanza as she continues to describe the tactics she's employed to destroy her body, "I vomited/ her hungers," (lns 13-14) "I renounced / milk and honey/ and the taste of lunch," (lns 10-12) she describes that "now the bitch is burning" (ln 15) and that "she has

In the fourth stanza previously discussed, Boland describes that she “renounced/ milk and honey,” (lns 10-11) a clear biblical allusion. For the speaker of the poem, she deliberately gives up “milk and honey” as a way to punish herself. In the biblical sense, milk and honey represents all good things and a pure means of enjoyment. Therefore, the speaker is giving up all pure means of enjoyment, not only food, but truly everything that would make her enjoy herself. One can determine then that with these lines Boland attempts to indicate that religion is also culpable in punishing women. Meaning that, women have been feeling guilt for their very existence since the creation of man, according to the bible. By giving up these forms of enjoyment, the speaker hopes to have punished herself enough to be once again appealing to

Although she does not focus in on her experience as an Irish woman, the poem clearly describes the experience of a woman struggling with body image insecurities. The poem itself is laced with allusions to religion, thus creating an image of religious self-hatred. The juxtaposition of insecurity with the fall shows that she views her inability to maintain the ideal body as a sin. Ultimately, Boland details an experience that many women endure, and an experience that is not often highlighted in literature. Indeed, by reading this poem one can gain insight into how some women experience life. As Vanbuskirk describes, “Boland connects the psychology of anorexia to religion by relating it to a story in the Bible that has been used both as the basis of Christian theology about sin and as a justification for patriarchy”