What do Wednesday Addams, Sir Garfield Sobers, Hannibal Lecter and Count Tyrone Rugen from The Princess Bride have in common?
That’s right! They were all polydactylous.
Polydactyly is the congenital physical abnormality of having more than the usual number of fingers or toes.
Polydactyly. Now there’s a good-looking word.
When writing, you want to make your characters memorable. According to the exhaustive TV Tropes, polydactylism is one of those shorthand (ba-dum-dum) tropes for difference – your character is either shown to be adorably quirky and unconventional or their mutation is a metaphor for being a monster. For example, the allegation that Anne Boleyn had six-fingers (and an extra nipple to feed her demonic familiar) circulated after her execution and was (probably) false.
In terms of plot, being able to say “I’m looking for a six-fingered man” definitely narrows your field of suspects, as demonstrated in the detective series Monk and by Count Rugen. You know the routine:
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
They didn’t bother with Hannibal Lecter’s extra finger in the films. In Thomas Harris’s book, The Silence of the Lambs, he is described as having the comparatively rare central polydactyly on his left hand. Sinister! More common is ulnar or postaxial polydactyly, where the extra digit appears on the side of the hand, by the little finger.
In real life, many people born with ulnar polydactyly (like ‘Bond girl’ actress Gemma Arterton) have the extra digit surgically removed when they are children. Or, in the case of West Indian cricket legend, Garfield Sobers, they remove their own littlest little fingers – with the aid of catgut and a sharp knife. *shudders*
So what about Wednesday?
You may not be aware, because she isn’t the sort of girl to traipse around barefoot, but according to Charles Addams, writing in 1963, Wednesday Friday Addams has six toes on one foot. Of course, an extra toe is easier to disguise than an extra finger. Fans of classic sci-fi author John Wyndham’s book, The Chysalids, will recall that Sophie’s ‘blasphemous’ mutation was hidden for years by the simple expedient of not removing her shoes and socks in public. Until she did.
In Hungarian folk belief a person born with a sixth finger on one hand could be a táltos and capable of supernatural power. In fiction, extra digits can be good or bad omens, signs that characters are secretly related, or the reason why the character can do something that no-one else can.
They set the character apart, with an abnormality far more subtle than other supernumerary body parts – polycephaly (extra head), polymelia (extra limb), polyorchidism (extra testicle…although I guess that would only be unsubtle if you took your pants off in public). Moving on…
I don’t have any supernumerary body parts, and have to make do with a mere congenital anomaly – the atavistic swelling of the posterior helix of my right auricle. That’s right, I have a unilateral Darwin’s tubercle, which Charles Darwin called a Woolnerian tip when he wrote about it in The Descent of Man. It’s my vestigial pointy ear.
I’ve yet to read any fictional characters who are marked out as destined for greatness because of their tubercle, but I live in hope. Recommendations, anyone?