Ghost, host, hostage: a poet(h)ics of vulnerability in Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder

ABSTRACT This paper considers how Emma Donoghue’s novel The Wonder addresses the historical phenomenon of “fasting girls”. Premised on the idea of the body as a condition for exposure, my reading of the narrative is organised around the affective ties that bring into relief the ethical salience of vulnerability highlighted in the figure of the female faster. Insofar as vulnerability is both a social and ontological condition it also offers a structural foil to the narrative’s engagement with the discourse of hospitality formalised through the use of the Victorian tropes of detective work, medical science, sensationalist journalism, and Christian dogma. Borrowing ideas from Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Erinn C. Gilson, among others, I argue that through its visceral construction of hospitality The Wonder calls our attention to the nineteenth century’s anxiety about female autonomy, the encroachment of empirical knowledge, the traps of imperial power, and the precariousness of life. Seen through the lens of the eschaton of hospitality, the novel examines the ambivalence of the soteriological promise tied to the Christian guilt ethic and the imperative of redemption, suggesting instead a secular ethics of care rooted in empathy, compassion, and unconditional love as the ultimate agents of resurrection.