Trauma And Recovery In A Thousand Acres

As one of the most important American female writers, Jane Smiley makes greatcontributions to contemporary American literature. She has published many famous workssince the1980s’. Among them, her masterpiece A Thousand Acres, won the Pulitzer Prizefor fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, arouses wide critical appraisal. Inthe novel, she employs first-person narration to describe the Cooks’ history of the rise andfall. The novel unfolds as Larry Cook, a successful Iowa farmer, decides to incorporatethe family farm, and turn it over to his three daughters; it also exposes an unsavory,abuse-riddled reality behind the fa ade of a picture-perfect successful American familyfarm. Ginny, the heroine of the story, lives in a typical patriarchal family. After she isembittered by numerous traumas, her self-consciousness wakes up gradually. For onething, Ginny’s submissive and cowardly characters are formed by the patriarchaldomination from her father and husband. For another, Ginny, who is provided with littlechance to identify with her mother and no assurance from her father, withdraws herselffrom the surface of most relationships, ignoring both her own needs and her sadness. Theretelling of the memory forces Ginny to face her vulnerability and powerlessness and helpher to awaken her self-consciousness.Based on trauma theory, the thesis expounds Ginny’s traumas from the perspectives ofpatriarchal domination and maternal absence. Generally speaking, people who go throughtypes of extremely traumatic experience usually have certain symptoms or problemsafterward. All the obvious trauma syndrome of people, including repetition compulsion,repression and dissociation, can bring about tremendous consequences to theself-perception and even self-esteem of the individuals. Ginny’s traumatic experiences areno exception. However, after going through three fundamental stages of recovery astrauma therapist Judith Herman claims: the establishment of a sense of safety;remembrance and mourning or telling the stories; reconnection with ordinary life, Ginnyfinally overcomes all the difficulties and successfully works through trauma byreconnecting with ordinary life.