A Study Of Children Images In Dombey And Son From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

Charles Dickens is one of the greatest British novelists of the realistic criticism in nineteenth century. His fifteen long novels have attracted great attention in both readers and academia since they were published. Dickens is good at describing the life experiences of the "small potatoes" from the underclass, especially the hard life of women, children and the old, to explore sharply the darkness of British society. And the depiction of children images has an extreme importance in Dickens’s works. However, the research on children images from scholars at home and abroad only focuses on those few books, such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. The novel Dombey and Son selected in this thesis revolves around the miserable life of Mr. Dombey, the boss of an oversea trading company. And it has successfully shaped three children images from different class under the background of high-speed development in British industry. They all face a common problem in their initial growth stage:traumatic experiences in childhood. Yet to date, none of scholars do comprehensive analysis from this aspect, but mostly do their research on author’s concept of critical realism and the symbolic meanings in the works.As the most important period of human’s growth, childhood experiences have significant influence on their psychological and physical development. Dickens came from a poor petty-bourgeois family in the 19th century in Britain. His life and sufferings in the childhood make the children images very penetrating. Trauma study can date back to 19 century; particularly the research on psychological trauma by Sigmund Freud provides a basis for the following development of trauma theory. This thesis will analyze traumatic experiences the three little characters have suffered during their childhood by relying mainly on psychological trauma from trauma theory. It concentrates more on their different attitude and mental changes after traumatic experiences. And on the basis of these, this thesis also analyzes the aesthetic features of children’s trauma in this novel.This thesis is divided into five parts. The first chapter is introduction, which contains a brief introduction of the author Charles Dickens and his novel Dombey and Son as well as the children images in his major works. The second chapter is about the literature review of this novel and an overview of trauma theory, including the definition of trauma and the development of trauma theory. In the third chapter, through the analysis of psychological trauma, firstly the author explores that the main traumatic events leading to children’s psychological trauma consist of relative’s death, father’s abuse, stressful school environment and school violence. Furthermore, through a close reading of the novel, the author analyzes the causes of children trauma from the view of society, family and school in accordance to the basic definition of trauma. Chapter four discusses the aesthetic features of traumatized children through its representation of social reality and the beauty of children’s trauma. Meanwhile, it also is a narrative and overwriting of his life experiences. The last chapter is a conclusion, which is related to author’s main findings, study significance and limitations.The thesis breaks the limit of previous study which interprets children images only from the perspective of critical realism. It researches children’s representation of trauma in Dombey and Son from different perspectives, including traumatic experience, responses and causes. This provides a new and more comprehensive interpretation. And it further explores the real life status of children in the social and cultural background of the rapid development in British industry, which gives us some illuminating examples in modern children’s growth and education.