Trauma And Moral Development—A Study Of Women Characters In Graham Swift’s Novels

Graham Swift(1949-)is one of the most famous novelists in the contemporary literary world.This thesis employs the theory of trauma and care ethics to study women characters in his The Sweet Shop Owner,Out of this World,and Last Orders.As Swift’s Waterland is classified as a typical "historiographic metafiction" by Linda Hutcheon,scholars from home and abroad have done a lot of research on the traumatic history and the relationship between history and characters,while other research subjects of Swift’s works include intertextuality,narration,metaliterary etc.Among the studies on Swift’s characters,the dilemma and trauma of middle-aged men is one of the themes which has been widely discussed in various literature.However,scholars have seldom analyzed or even noticed the different ways that the women characters deal with their distinct trauma.In addition,Swift’s women characters are frequently regarded as negative and stereotypical,and they even serve as the roots of the male characters’ trauma.Under such academic background,this thesis conducts a study of Swift’s women characters through Judith Herman’s theory of trauma and Carol Gilligan’s care ethics.Herman approaches trauma from feminist perspective and does a systematic classification of the roots and symptoms of trauma.She points out that recovery of trauma generally goes through three stages-establishment of safety,remembrance and mourning,and reconnection with ordinary life.During the process of resolving women’s moral problems,Gilligan puts forward care ethics,which is centered on care and responsibility.She divides moral development into three stages-selfishness,self-sacrifice and a balanced state between them.This research focuses on three representative women characters from Swift’s early period,middle period and later period respectively.With Herman’s theory,it analyzes the women characters’ traumatic experience and symptoms,and demonstrates the process of denial,acting-out and walking out of trauma through comparing their different treatment of traumatic events.Meanwhile,this thesis employs Carol Gilligan’s analysis of selfishness,self-sacrifice and a balanced state to study the moral level of these women characters and their efforts in the moral development.Through the analyses made above,this research tries to establish a connection between the treatment of trauma and moral development.It intends to show that women characters’ treatment of trauma restricts their moral development and their moral level influences their attitudes towards trauma.This thesis demonstrates the complementary relationship between them,which finally stresses the importance of voicing women’s true feelings.By the means of displaying the psychological and moral change of these women characters,it is easy to see Swift’s gradual recognition of women’s voice and moral development,which helps to remove the prejudice against his stereotypical image of women and provides a new perspective to appreciate and study Swift’s works.