Isola: A Novel

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.

In the world of Isola, Goodman portrays Europe’s patriarchal values as deeply rooted in and justified through Christian spiritual doctrine, laying the groundwork for Marguerite to experience a crisis of faith as she begins to dismantle patriarchal control in her life. Throughout her life, Marguerite is surrounded by people who have complete trust in God’s will, but when she confronts contradictions, unpunished evils, and senseless violence and harm in the world around her, Marguerite doubts not only God’s will but God’s presence in her life. Marguerite’s closest companions—Damienne, Claire, and Madame D’Artois—all accept divine mysteries without question, situating God as the ultimate patriarch. belief that God uses hardship to teach lessons of virtue. For example, on the island, Damienne believes God is present in the snowstorm not because He wants to punish them, but because He wants to teach them to be humble in the face of nature. She believes that by acting virtuously at all times—even when it may not be practical—God will see her and reward her.

Goodman positions Damienne, who believes it isn’t her place to question God’s intentions, as a foil for Marguerite, who rejects the idea of quiet work and prayer as quintessentially feminine virtues and spends the whole of the novel repeatedly questioning the “why” of her circumstances. As Marguerite rebels both internally and externally against her lack of agency, she views the godly virtues of patience and humility as ways to keep her—and all women—docile. Roberval weaponizes the psalms and scripture against her, which leads Marguerite to associate God with punishment, not salvation. After her garden fails on the island, Margeurite confesses that she doesn’t believe her prayers are answered, and she refuses to see the potential lesson in the situation because she “will not be grateful when we starve here” (187). When baby Auguste and Damienne die, even after she begs for their safety, Marguerite wholeheartedly believes God has abandoned her. She brings no offerings to the Virgin because she won’t pray to “she who smiled while Damienne stopped breathing” (255). Marguerite grapples with the disconnect between the God of love and protection she’s been taught to worship and the trauma and suffering she and her loved ones experience as they struggle to survive the wilderness. For example, she notes that even if God and the Virgin are still watching over her, their lack of action to intercede in her companions’ deaths only proves that they don’t hear her prayers. Marguerite refuses to accept that God has a larger plan for her suffering, especially when men like Roberval seem to walk the earth unscathed by divine wrath.

Over the course of her arc, Marguerite finds her way back to faith in God’s omnipresence when she experiences the sublime in the wilderness—a context disconnected from the religious power structures in which she was raised. She witnesses an unexplainable natural phenomenon, and the sheer power and beauty of the scene alters her understanding of divine mysteries. She writes: “I asked myself, How could it be? But I could not doubt what I was witnessing. I thought, Judge by what you hear. Judge by what you see” (254). Rather than seek to explain every aspect of the world around her, Marguerite comes to accept that some things are simply incomprehensible and embraces a version of the divine that pervades the world in ways she doesn’t understands. She doesn’t become as devout as Damienne or Claire, and she still allows herself space to question and interpret God’s signs, but Marguerite learns to find comfort in the religious texts that used to frighten her on her own terms, evidencing her personal growth. Just like Auguste once claimed to believe in symmetry, Marguerite tries to live by accepting that both good and evil can exist in the same place, and when she contemplates God’s “riddles,” she no longer demands a firm answer.