50 pages • 1 hour read
Danielle ValentineDelicate Condition
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Fairy Tales
Anna uses the concept of fairy tales at different moments in her story to create varied commentary about the ways in which knowledge about pregnancy and women’s bodies is established and disseminated. When reflecting on her mother’s matter-of-fact explanation about human reproduction when she was a child, Anna concludes that even this explanation was a construction: “It took me decades to understand that this too was a fairy tale” (11). Here, a “fairy tale” is a story told to children by adults in order to obscure or soften a difficult reality. In Anna’s case, she had to realize that conceiving a child isn’t always as simple as a loving couple having sex; it can be a grueling process that involves much more struggle and much more suffering.
Other connotations of “fairy tale” are also present in the novel. In the Prologue, which is narrated by an older Anna who has been through the events of the novel, Anna reflects on various superstitions surrounding pregnancy. These superstitions, she now understands, aim at keeping women from miscarrying, keeping children safe from external forces, or spreading information about the woes of pregnancy. Anna notes that most people dismiss these tales today: They are “[s]tories told by women and mothers. Stories no one believed anymore” (XII). Here, Anna uses the term “fairy tale” to reference stories coded with knowledge about women and pregnancy intended to teach or warn future generations of women. Throughout the novel, Anna finds herself searching for connections with other women who might be able to provide knowledge that she desperately needs about her body and the nature of her unusual pregnancy; this knowledge is kept from her until the story’s final moments, as she finally gains access to Siobhan’s coven and the ancient knowledge about pregnancy they have preserved. In this way, Anna’s story acts as its own kind of fairy tale—a dark cautionary tale about the dangers of patriarchal institutions and the need for female friendship.
Dead Animals
Delicate Condition is brimming with dead animals—the baby bird in the opening chapter, the raccoon in the pool, and (most notably) the unfortunate cat that loiters outside Talia’s house. What is especially notable about this motif is how Anna’s identification with imperiled animals shifts over the course of the narrative. Early in her pregnancy journey, dead animals are a source of horror for Anna. She is unsettled by the image of the broken bird’s egg at the end of the first chapter, with the “half-formed embryo on the concrete” (5). The sight reminds her of how precarious and prone to failure her own IVF process might be. Over the course of the first half of the novel, Anna internalizes this fear; she notes on the way to the hospital with her bruised rib that she’s become “a rabbit suddenly attuned to the scent of a predator” (203). The predator/prey framework gives insight into how Anna views herself in relation to her monstrous pregnancy. She feels that she is the still-living prey only just becoming aware of impending danger. Because the narrative is so full of animals that have already met various violent ends, this rabbit metaphor creates tension as Anna, perceiving herself as prey, seems on course to meet her own end.
Anna, however, doesn’t come to a violent end at all. In the second half of the novel, the predator/prey framework is turned on its head entirely as Anna’s monstrous cravings drive her to hunt, kill, and eat a living cat. Anna’s shift from feeling predated to embracing the role of the predator marks a shift in the way she pursues answers about the mystery of her pregnancy. As she begins to embrace her inner monstrosity, Anna begins to search for answers in places she was previously afraid to look, such as Io Preecher’s website. As she moves from prey to predator, Anna becomes the instigator of her own story’s end.
Dolls
The image of the doll has a complex trajectory of the course of the novel. For Anna, the doll is a child’s toy—typically intended for young girls—that is used not only for the child’s entertainment but also as a way of modeling what societal expectations of femininity the child should adhere to. The doll that appears through much of the second half of the novel is a doll of a character that Anna played earlier in her career; it is a representation of Anna’s own body, reproduced through the lens of a capitalist, patriarchal society, intended for a child’s consumption. In this way, the image of the doll begins as a literal representation of how Anna’s body is not entirely her own, but is instead commodified and used by the system that gave her fame and exposure.
The doll of Anna’s character becomes a primary site of the novel’s horror. As Anna finds various dolls strewn about Talia’s residence, each marked with a red X over the places where she feels pain, Anna assumes that someone is using the dolls to harm her. This assumption is in line with the ways in which the societal treatment of women’s bodies has already repeatedly harmed Anna. The reveal at the end of the novel—that Siobhan’s coven has been attempting to use the dolls to alleviate Anna’s pain—is a nuanced reversal. The coven’s use of dolls speaks to an attempt to reclaim the mechanisms by which society objectifies women and teaches girls how to “properly” enact femininity. Moreover, the coven is reclaiming this symbol in order to mend the pain that a patriarchal society inflicts on women. In this way, the doll is not only a symbol of reclamation, but also resistance.
