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

by Deborah M. Horvitz

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791491898
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	11/02/2000
Series:	SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180
File size:	326 KB

About the Author

Deborah Horvitz teaches at Salem State College and at the School at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Table of 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

Editorial Reviews

In this analysis of literary witness-bearing to psychic-cum-political trauma provoked by sexual violence, Horvitz (Salem State College; School at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) samples the fiction of seven North American women writers from the late 19th and 20th centuries<-->promising emancipatory, yet reactionary eras: Leslie Marmon Silko, Gayl Jones, Pauline Hopkins, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. From a reading informed by psychoanalytic, feminist, and multicultural literary studies, the author reaffirms that there is a gender difference in equating inflicting pain with sexual gratification and that such analyses help break the vicious cycle. She also calls for a parallel study of male-authored fiction. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"I like the almost seamless blending of literary discussion with psychological information, as well as the author's use of methodologies from the areas of women's studies, cultural studies, African-American literary and folk studies, multiculturalism, and psychoanalysis. The book is significant to the entire field of women's studies and is also a marker for the gaps in our accepted academic discourses. It is, in a large sense, cultural history. By paralleling turn-of-the-century works with very contemporary ones, Horvitz creates a meaningful century of discussion." — Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and Her Family

"Horvitz uses recent trauma theory as she analyzes the representation of sexual trauma and heterosexual sadomasochism in selected works by a diverse group of women authors. This book provides a thoughtful and eminently readable contribution to the study of psychoanalysis and literature, trauma literature, feminist studies, and women's fiction." — J. Brooks Bouson, author of Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison

From the Publisher