‘A peculiar energy source’: EcoGothic peatlands in Karen Russell’s ‘Bog Girl: A Romance’

This article examines the intersection between landscape and temporality in Karen Russell’s short story ‘Bog Girl: A Romance’ (2019). Drawing on the notion of the ‘eco-gothic’, Derek Gladwin’s discussion of ‘bog gothic’ and Karin Sanders’s work on ‘bog bodies’, I examine Russell’s depiction of the spectral bogland as a metaphoric site of feminized EcoGothic rupture. The article first examines Russell’s Seamus Heaney-inspired depiction of the bog’s EcoGothic qualities, considering how this interstitial ecosystem mediates the murky intersection between past and present on the peripheries of the cutaway bog. Second, I explore Russell’s deployment of bog EcoGothic in the context of mechanized peat production, situating the story in relation to ongoing debate surrounding the bog’s role as a ‘carbon sink’ in the Anthropocene era.