Unclaimed Stories: Narrating Sexual Violence and the Traumatized Self in Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’s Writings

Wehling-Giorgi, Katrin

Abstract

My paper proposes a comparative reading that explores the links between sexual/gendered violence, trauma and untold experience in the earlier works of Alice Sebold (Lucky, The Lovely Bones) and in a selection of Elena Ferrante’s texts (L’amore molesto and the Neapolitan Novels). Through the lens of trauma theory, I analyze the two authors’ textual and ekphrastic negotiations of the traumatized subject, arguing that the experience of sexual abuse lies at the origin of their complex conceptualizations of femininity as well as often acting as a catalyst of aesthetic expression. Moreover, by showing how Sebold and Ferrante employ elements of magical realism to explore and articulate precisely those silenced spaces and gaps of experience, I argue that their works provide powerful examples of how female-authored texts resist master narratives.

Citation

Wehling-Giorgi, K. (2021). Unclaimed Stories: Narrating Sexual Violence and the Traumatized Self in Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’s Writings. Modern Language Notes, 136(1), 118-142. https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0007

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jun 4, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021-01
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 11, 2021
• Journal: Modern Language Notes
• Print ISSN: 0149-6611
• Electronic ISSN: 1080-6598
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 136
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 118-142
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0007
• Related Public URLs: https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/mln/special-issues