In Olivia Muenter’s Little One, the physical body is the primary means through which control is exercised and maintained. The novel demonstrates how external systems of power, from the cult on the farm to the wellness industry in the city, target the body through food restriction and punishing exercise to achieve psychological dominance. Catharine’s story illustrates how these systems shape both her behavior and her self-perception. Even after leaving the farm, she continues to use physical discipline to manage emotional stress, suggesting that the lessons taught by her father remain deeply ingrained. Through recurring images of hunger, exertion, and measurement, the novel shows how trauma can continue to influence a person’s relationship with their body long after the original source of harm is gone.

The disciplinary regime at the farm establishes control by weaponizing the body’s most basic needs. Catharine’s father understands that controlling food and physical comfort gives him power over the people around him. This is achieved through public rituals designed to induce shame and enforce compliance. During a “moderation fast,” Catharine’s simple question about adding variety to their meals results in a grotesque public shaming where serving bowls are filled with cow manure, a meal designated solely for her as a “lesson.” The punishment directly links a desire for food with filth and humiliation. This ideology is further mechanized through the introduction of the scale, which her father calls a “biological discipline gauge” (136). The public weigh-ins reduce people to numbers and transform a private relationship with the body into a matter of communal judgment, reinforcing the father’s authority over every aspect of their lives.

After physically escaping the farm, Catharine doesn’t leave these ideas behind. Instead, she adapts them to fit her new life in New York. Her daily routine is governed by a rigid discipline that mirrors the cult’s ideology, as she focuses on careful body measurements, strict exercise, and a constant effort to maintain control over herself. She embarks on punishing eight-mile runs; measures her waist, thighs, and neck with a tape; and meticulously records the numbers. When a panic attack strikes, she rejects gentle self-care options, thinking, “I have no interest in being gentle with myself. I want to push myself around, to bully whatever weak part of me I need to until it eventually makes life easier” (8). This internal monologue reveals that she has fully absorbed her father’s beliefs that discomfort produces strength and that self-denial is a form of self-improvement. What appears to be self-discipline often functions as a continuation of patterns established on the farm.

Food remains the primary source of Catharine’s unresolved relationship with control. Her annual ritual of buying a cake to mark a “decade of survival” is less a celebration and more a painful reenactment of her ongoing struggle with hunger and restraint (6). The desire to “plunge [her] open hand into the cake” and “shovel it into [her] mouth” reflects a longing to abandon control (7), but the impulse is quickly replaced by shame and panic. She ultimately throws the entire cake down the trash chute, choosing deprivation over indulgence. In this moment of crisis, she finds solace in her father’s most enduring lesson: “Hunger is a thing you can hold” (11). For Catharine, hunger becomes more than a physical sensation; it’s something predictable and manageable in moments of emotional uncertainty. Ultimately, the disciplined body represents both the lasting effects of her trauma and the means through which she continues to cope with it.