Conspicuously Silent: The Excesses of Religion and Medicine in Emma Donoghue’s Historical Novels The Wonder and The Pull of the Stars
Journal: New directions in Irish and Irish American literature
Year: 2023

Abstract This chapter explores Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder (2016) and The Pull of the Stars (2020) as texts that address the wrongs of the male-dominated institutions of religion and medicine, silently complicit of various kinds of female invisibility. As will be discussed from a cultural memory approach, The Wonder , a story tinted with religious fervour and scientific scepticism, probes into the so-called fasting-girls phenomenon and ultimately exposes a diseased culture nurtured by toxic pract