Date of Award
8-7-2018
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Randy Malamud
Second Advisor
LeeAnne Richardson
Third Advisor
Jay Rajiva
Abstract
This thesis examines trauma experienced by wives of returned soldiers in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and West’s The Return of the Soldier. Specifically, it considers how these women respond to their husbands returning from war shell-shocked. Critics and historians alike helped lift women’s wartime stories into cultural consciousness, but this attention neglects female trauma that occurs concurrently with a soldier’s shell-shock symptoms. Woolf and West both portray wives reacting to the symptoms of their husband’s traumatization; the women’s reactions resemble and often mirror symptoms of trauma. To explore how trauma manifests for these women, this thesis adopts frameworks established by Caruth, Herman, and Winnicott to assess how these traumatic narratives are told and what psychological experiences are being conveyed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/12353148
Recommended Citation
Turner, Nicole, "Recognizing the War-Torn Wives of West’s Return of the Soldier and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2018.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/12353148