Interpretive Cover, and Analysis

One of the things I find the most interesting about the poem is how the wife is described as not only a “witch,” but a “fowl witch”— all the while, there is no indication of her having any supernatural abilities whatsoever. In fact, the only seemingly supernatural elements in the poem in general belong to the shape and it’s filling the room “with snowy light.” The wife, at least through what is shown in the text, is simply a woman in a marriage, trying to keep her husband. 

The title of the poem is deceptive in the sense that it flat out describes the wife as both a witch and a bride; the two being hyphenated prevents them from being able to be separated. As such, the cover I designed is equally deceptive, capitalizing on stereotypical witch imagery with the potions, broom, and spider. However, the assigned label of “bride” was also not forgotten, as there’s a ‘bridal’ bouquet in the bottom corner. Though since, as said, the witchiness and bridal status cannot be separated, the bouquet is formed by cobweb/spider imagery to represent and enforce that interconnectedness. The word bride is very thin in comparison to witch, and all of the witch related imagery overtakes the bridal variety by much; this is to show how the narrative wants so badly to primarily paint her in a way that is not concretely shown.