Elizabeth Bowen and the Writing of Trauma

Book excerpt: Elizabeth Bowen and the Writing of Trauma analyses the treatment of memory and the past in Bowen’s writing through the lens of trauma theory. It draws on the theories of Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud, and Cathy Caruth, to propose that Bowen’s work is best understood through the psychological, narratological, and linguistic effects of trauma in her fiction. Bowen’s writing complicates existing deconstructive and psychoanalytic models of trauma and literature, and testifies to the responsibility of survival and the ethics of bearing witness.