Isola: A Novel

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

Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval is the text’s protagonist and narrator, based on the historic woman of the same name. As the novel opens, Marguerite is a young, naïve, and disobedient girl. She has green eyes and amber brown hair, and her clothes are always ruined from her rough style of play, foreshadowing her eventual rebellion against society’s prescribed gender roles. Both of Marguerite’s parents died when she was young, but she still lives in their castle, Perigord, with her nurse Damienne. Marguerite is strong-willed and argumentative. She considers herself unwise because she is impulsive and thinks only of herself when she acts, which often puts her innocent companions in danger with her. Marguerite learns to outwardly present as reserved and obedient to please her teachers, but internally, Marguerite still questions everything.

Marguerite particularly pushes back against the virtues ladies are meant to have—patience, humbleness, and diligence, which she calls the “deadly virtues”—because they threaten a life of freedom (23). Under Roberval’s guardianship, Marguerite struggles to gain agency and seeks ways to regain independence and control of her own life, highlighting the novel’s thematic interest in

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