'The heartaches and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to': The body politics of trauma in Pinter's 'The Dwarfs', 'The Room', 'A Slight Ache', and 'The Homecoming' (Harold Pinter)

In this thesis I will argue that The Dwarfs is a required foundation for a fuller and more complete understanding of one of Pinter's major thematic preoccupations in his early drama: male trauma and the culturally inspired and mediated program of masculine self-denial and forgetfulness that serves as a strategy for dealing with it. Simply stated, male trauma in The Dwarfs, The Room, A Slight Ache, and The Homecoming takes the form of death anxiety. In this context, the site of the male wound is the human body on which Pinter males read the signs of human weakness, human limitation, and human mortality writ large. By undertaking a close reading of the cause, the effect, and the consequence of Len and Pete's crisis in The Dwarfs, I will argue that the Pinter males' heightened state of vigilance and arousal in this novel and in the three plays in question is the result of their need to defend against the return of traumatic memories. It is in this context that I intend to speak of the post-traumatic manner in which Pinter males conduct their lives. In this respect, Len and Pete, I will argue, are prototypes for the males we encounter in the plays. Moreover, to the extent that Pete's relationship with Virginia in the novel is regulated in accordance with his distorted post-traumatic view of the human body, his and hers, I intend to argue that their relationship is the prototype for the one that men share with women in the plays. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...