Gender-Based Violence, Trauma, and Strategies for Coping in Colleen Hoover’s Novel It Ends With Us

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

جامعة قناة السويس كلية الآداب فسم اللغة الإنجليزية

المستخلص

This paper examines the portrayal of trauma and gendered violence in the novel "It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover. The analysis utilizes trauma theory and the concept of gendered violence and domestic abuse, as well as Dorrit Cohn's theories on diary novels, dissonant narrators, and consonant narrators. The results demonstrate that the main character, Lily, copes with her trauma and experiences of gendered violence represented by the men in her life; her father during her teenage years and by her husband later on by maintaining a diary, effectively utilizing script therapy. Moreover, she tries to overcome her trauma by denial mechanism; that she is not the same as her mother and her husband is good and better than her father. However, when this approach proves insufficient, she actively suppresses her issues and tries to overcome the trauma and revolt against her mother’s submission to her father and asks for divorce only to save her children from the suffering she has endured. The paper also reveals that Cohn's notions of dissonant and consonant narrators contribute to the depiction of Lily's character development throughout the novel.

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