| 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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