Literary Trauma

Sadism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in American Women's Fiction

Deborah M. Horvitz

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780791447123, 9780791447116
• eBook ISBN: 9780791491898
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminist Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

Examines representations of political, psychological, and sexual violence in seven novels by American women.

This book examines portrayals of political and psychological trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in the work of seven American women writers. Concentrating on novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pauline Hopkins, Gayl Jones, Leslie Marmon Silko, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood, Horvitz investigates whether memories of violent and oppressive trauma can be preserved, even transformed into art, without reproducing that violence. The book encompasses a wide range of personal and political traumas, including domestic abuse, incest, rape, imprisonment, and slavery, and argues that an analysis of sadomasochistic violence is our best protection against cyclical, intergenerational violence, a particularly timely and important subject as we think about how to stop "hate" crimes and other forms of political and psychic oppression.

Table of contents

• LITERARY TRAUMA
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: Bearing Witness
• 2. READING THE UNCONSCIOUS IN LESLIE MARMON SILKO’S Almanac of the Dead
• 3. FREUD AND FEMINISM IN GAYL JONES’S Corregidora AND DOROTHY ALLISON’S Bastard out of Carolina
• 4. HYSTERIA AND TRAUMA IN PAULINE HOPKINS’S Of One Blood; Or, The Hidden Self
• 5. POSTMODERN REALISM, TRUTH, AND LIES IN JOYCE CAROL OATES’S What I Lived For
• 6. INTERTEXTUALITY AND POSTSTRUCTURAL REALISM IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S Alias Grace AND CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S “THE YELLOW WALLPAPER”
• 7. Conclusion: Words Finally Spoken
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index