Inedia prodigiosa
This is a story in which faith comes into conflict with science and logic must battle ignorance. Even the physician treating the little girl supposedly existing without eating is overcome by his Catholicism, educating Lib, the voice of reason, about a phenomenon called Inedia prodigiosa. Lib thinks to herself, “So they had a special name for it, this freakish spectacle as if it were as real a thing as a stone or a shoe. Dark Ages, indeed; they weren’t over.” Allegedly, saints so afflicted could go for decades without suffering any negative consequences of a complete loss of appetite. It is significant that the objects Lib chooses for a point of comparison in her simile are things like a shoe and a stone. They are both tangible, visceral, and observable, reflective of the fact that she is trying to address the situation biologically while the doctor insists on treating it theologically.
The Doctor
Shortly after raising the specter of the Dark Ages myth, the doctor forwards his own unique hypothesis based upon the biologically observable fact that the girl starving herself to death is perpetually chilly to the touch. He theorizes that Anna may be undergoing a metabolic transformation leaving her more reptilian than mammalian. A little later Lib turns this idea into another effective simile when confronting Anna’s mother with the fact that her physician is a dotard. “McBrearty imagines your daughter to be turning into something like a lizard.” Lib’s more direct interpretation of the doctor’s hypothesis suggests that more is going on than simply an aging man veering into senility. The doctor’s delusional leap of logic is situated as an iconic example of the danger of violating Ockham’s Razor. That is a term that essentially proposes that one should first disprove the most likely solution to a problem before hypothesizing about far more unlikely solutions. It is strongly hinted that this violation of logic is connected to patriarchy and rampant sexism among both religious and secular institutions.
Allusion
Lib turns to Shakespeare for inspiration to help her guide her through her more nihilistic moments of doubt about the entire validity and purpose of existence. “Fate was faceless, life arbitrary, a tale told by an idiot.” In one of her moments of greatest darkness when overcome by thoughts of the loss of her daughter, she dwells within a chasm surrounded by sound and fury like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, viewing life as little more than an absurdist comedy composed by a hack writer who thinks he’s written a Greek tragedy.
Figurative or Literal?
Lib is a British nurse arriving in rural Ireland and bringing all the historical prejudices involved in that nationalistic conflict. As a result, she is not there for very long before she arrives at a conclusion. “Everything was religion here, thought Lib.” Sometimes it is difficult to parse the difference between a literal statement and a metaphor. The evidence presented which has led Lib to this conclusion certainly supports the notion that almost every aspect of daily life for those in this particular Irish village springs forth from a devout Catholicism. In that sense, there is a literal essence to the assertion. That Lib’s opinion is actually purely metaphorical—and that there is a lot more going on there than religion—will be ironically revealed by the end of the story, however.
