Survival of Women as a Trauma Narratives in Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State
Keywords:
Social class, gender inequality, sexual assault, abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, brutal captivity, survival, anger and love.Abstract
Roxane Gay’s novel, An Untamed State is based on trauma narratives which explores the untamed realities within Haiti, delving into issues of social class and gender. The novel focuses on the psychological aspects of the narrative, revealing how Mireille Duval Jameson, the protagonist, endures brutal captivity, sexual assault and abuse after being kidnapped from her family's affluent estate in Port-au-Prince. She was captive for thirteen days because her father refused to pay the ransom of 1 million dollars. In her captivity she faces sexual assault and act of abuse. After her release she feels physical freedom but her mind was in the cage and in the end, she experiences post-traumatic stress disorder.
References
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV. American Psychiatric Association, 1994.
Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, Johns
Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 100?12.
Caruth, Cathy. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Caruth, Johns Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 3–12
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