An Analysis Of Trauma Recovery Of The Heroine In The Gravedigger's Daughter

The Gravedigger's Daughter,published in 2007,is Joyce Carol Oates's 36~thh novel which is based on German Jewish immigrant descendant Rebecca's traumatic life experiences in America.The scholars in China mainly concentrate on cultural identity,ethical identity and identities and other scholars focus on the alienated and mimic themes of the novel.However,research on the meaning of the trauma Rebecca suffers in different periods is not enough.This thesis will analyze the heroine's trauma and recovery process based on trauma theory.Trauma refers not only to the physical injury caused by violent acts from others and the outside world,but also to the psychological trauma caused by traumatic events.Trauma researcher Cathy Caruth defines trauma as an unexpected and overwhelming violent event that is unavoidable.The traumatic experiences will continue to influence the psyche of the traumatized,the victims must face the trauma to recover from it.Another researcher,Judith Herman points out that the recovery process includes three steps:establishing the sense of security,facing and recovering from traumatic past,restoring outside-world connections.Based on these trauma theories,this paper intends to explore how the protagonist,as a Jewish descendant,faces trauma and recovers from it in the contemporary American society,discussing Rebecca's childhood trauma,marital torture and Jewish identity trauma.The main body of this paper includes three chapters.The first chapter focuses on the heroine's childhood trauma.After becoming an orphan,Rebecca makes effort to seek a new life to cure childhood wound caused by the efficiency of parental love and the broken of family in her original family.She tries to overcome her childhood inferiority by setting up a new family to cure childhood trauma.The second chapter explores the heroine's marital trauma.This chapter attempts to interpret Rebecca's efforts to get rid of marital torture.After escaping from her husband's familial violence,Rebecca tries to establish a sense of safety and restore outside-world connection with the help of caregivers.The third chapter mainly analyzes the heroine's Jewish identity trauma.After recovering from childhood trauma and marital trauma,Rebecca is gradually confronted with her Jewish identity through successfully facing the traumatic past,and she tries to re-examine and retrieve her Jewish identity,from which she finally recovers from Jewish identity trauma.By exploring the trauma recovery theme in the novel,this thesis attempts to explore Oates's intention to recur the traumatic dilemma faced by Jewish descendants and their efforts to recover from trauma in contemporary American society through Rebecca's personal traumatic experiences.Oates tries to appeal for Jewish female to face the trauma and recover from it through their own efforts.In this way,Oates shows her concerns for the traumatized Jewish female community and the Jewish people.