Long-term survival in isolation — the kind that Marguerite experienced, measured in years rather than days or weeks — requires something additional.

It requires the capacity to maintain psychological function over an extended period without external validation, social connection, or any of the normal structures of human community.

It requires the ability to find or create meaning in daily activities that are purely functional — hunting, shelter maintenance, fire-tending — that have no social or symbolic dimension beyond keeping a body alive.

Research on long-term isolation — whether in the context of extreme imprisonment, prolonged illness, or survival situations — consistently identifies several factors that distinguish those who maintain functional capacity from those who do not: the ability to maintain routine, the presence of a belief framework that gives the experience meaning, and some form of purposeful activity that provides a sense of agency rather than passive suffering.

All three of these factors appear, in the accounts of Marguerite’s time on the island, to have been present.