Estrangement and the Ethics of Attention in Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder

Abstract

Drawing upon theoretical frameworks, such as Sara Ahmed’s “strange encounters” (2000), “willful subjects” (2014), and Judith Butler’s vulnerability (2004), the present article aims to explore female agency and action in The Wonder as fundamental steps to achieve transformation and change. For this purpose, I first offer a brief introduction to the vulnerability of the female body in Irish history, as it counts on a significant tradition firmly rooted in religious and class politics. Significantly, the novel foregrounds a reformulation of religious superstitions into new patterns of existence. Lib’s watchfulness and vigil astutely enact a self-displaying activity that offers the promise of a more communicative and empathic interaction with Anna. In addition, attention will be also paid to the narrative techniques that depict Lib’s failure to read Anna’s body fully as a wounded individual, thus revealing an encounter with alterity that can only work when there is will, love and affection. The story, then, challenges an aesthetics of grief and guilt and enacts, in turn, a new pattern of existence for both Anna and Lib. Such a pattern demands an ethics of attention and communication aimed to restore the self and display a more affective stance, which is necessary in order to encounter the limits of intelligibility and find out the perverse truth behind Anna’s “wonderful anomaly” (Donoghue 2016: 97).