Subjectivity and Suspicion of Objective Truth

Perhaps the central theme of the conversations in Stella Maris is Alicia’s privileging of subjective truth over shared notions of objective reality. This theme manifests itself in several ways. For one, Alicia is deeply suspicious of truth deriving from shared human experience or from empirical tests. Relatedly, she also believes that the most profound truths of the world are essentially breakthroughs in perception, achieved by a singular person. The implications of these themes are far-reaching in the narrative, touching especially on her insistence on the substantive reality of the horts, and her ongoing romantic desires for her brother.

Alicia shares her suspicion of the notion of objective reality almost immediately with Dr. Cohen. She notes that “I’m not really concerned with what other people believe,” immediately curtailing the possibility of deriving truth from consensus (16). In the same conversation, she...