Lapvona

Villiam is the lord of Lapvona, having inherited this role from his ancestors. He is a spoiled and privileged man who labors neither physically nor intellectually for his wealth, instead spending his days demanding a nonstop stream of entertainment from visitors and servants. The endless pursuit of pleasure has left him disconnected from reality; when Jacob dies, he does not process the scene as real and acts as though it is all a game. His later thoughts of Jacob fill him with vaguely defined negative emotion, showing that on some level he does understand what happened but simply lacks the emotional maturity to face it. Similarly, when his first wife dies, he does not show any signs of grieving or even acknowledging her absence.

Villiam is a primary vehicle through which the novel explores The Dichotomy Between Wealth and Poverty. He abuses his power as lord by stealing from the villagers and manipulating them to increase his wealth. He employs bandits to raid the villagers and then takes the stolen goods himself. During the drought, he hoards water in a reservoir and thinks nothing of half of the village perishing, as he can simply replace them with laborers from the north. Similarly, he uses Father Barnabas to instill religious fear in the villagers to maintain control.

After marrying Agata and becoming the soon-to-be stepfather of her child, Villiam experiences a character arc that drastically impacts his disposition and behavior. Villiam is at first excited by the prospect of how his life will improve with the coming of the Christ Child. He believes that such a miracle will bring new visitors and growth to Lapvona and thus increase his own wealth and renown. Soon, however, he begins to worry about the responsibilities of his new role and finds himself riddled with anxiety and stress. These pressures prove too much; when Lispeth offers him an escape into drunkenness, he takes it and ends up poisoned.

Father Barnabas, the priest of Lapvona, works for Villiam to manipulate and control the villagers. He and Villiam are close and regard one another as near equals because of their shared knowledge and power; at one point Villiam even confesses that he loves the priest.

Father Barnabas is not motivated by any true religious belief or fervor but rather chose his occupation for selfish reasons: “Yes, Father Barnabas had been educated at the seminary, but poorly; he’d been a terrible student. He loved not the Christ but himself and the thrill of keeping people in line” (96). Because of this, he begins to panic when he thinks of the pilgrimages that will be made to the new Christ Child. Night terrors haunt him until he finally takes his own life.

Jude is the sheepherder of Lapvona and lives outside of the village. He loves his lambs and shows them great affection and care at the expense of all else. During the drought, many villagers beg to trade for one of his lambs, but he refuses, letting the lambs die of starvation rather than see them eaten by the villagers. After the drought and the trauma of engaging in cannibalism, Jude does not return to sheepherding, but he is later employed by Villiam as horseman at the manor. Jude seems to transfer the love he had for the sheep to the horses.

Jude is the oldest bachelor in Lapvona, which speaks to his misogyny and deep-seated issues with women: He is not emotionally mature enough to feel attraction for anyone but adolescent girls, as in his capture and rape of Agata and his later fantasies about Lispeth. Jude does not experience any remorse for the abuses he inflicts on Agata, instead feeling that it is natural and appropriate that he lay claim to her: “It never occurred to Jude that the capture and detention of Agata as an adolescent was anything but his rightful duty as a man” (243). In contrast to Grigor, who comes to see and respect Ina as an equal, Jude believes he is naturally superior to women.

Agata comes from a family of bandits and was raped by her brother; her father then cut out her tongue and exiled her. Jude later found Agata and held her captive, raping her. In her distress, she sought help from another woman, Ina, trying to abort the child she had conceived with her brother and, when Marek was born, fleeing to Ina. However, Ina’s suggestion that she go to a nunnery left her little better off than she was before, and she flees the nuns during the drought. Jude finds and rapes her again, and once more she becomes pregnant. After so much suffering, Agata seems resigned to her circumstances and does not seek an abortion, though she remains unhappy.

Agata survives her numerous captivities—by Jude, in the nunnery, etc.—only by disassociating. She resents pregnancy partly because it forces her to confront the reality of her body and the abuses it has endured. Her voicelessness symbolizes her utter powerlessness in a society that treats her merely as an object for men’s sexual pleasure or as a vessel for giving birth. She ends her life drugged and sequestered in her room so that no harm can come to the child she carries.

After a disease killed her family and blinded her, Ina became a societal outcast, escaping to the woods, where she lived alone for over two decades. There, Ina learned the language of birds and the medicinal qualities of plants. Her connection with nature gives her wisdom that the other villagers lack. In her forties, she began mysteriously producing milk, perhaps triggered by the cries of hungry babies back in the village. She reentered society and works as a wet nurse, providing much-needed aid to the village. While she seems to enjoy the newfound belonging, Ina often provides these services out of obligation and pity rather than any sense of purpose.

Ina’s theft of the horse’s eyes begins a transformation that culminates in her becoming the wet nurse and mother to the Christ Child. When Grigor sees Ina at the end of the novel, she has grown younger, and Grigor acknowledges that there is something divine about her. Ina has a connection to the supernatural born of her openness to the mysteries of nature and disregard for the norms and structures of society.