In the Nests of Motherhood: Maternal Wounds and Subjective Trauma in Susan Fromberg Schaeffer’s Falling

Sreedevi S. 

Research Scholar, Bharathiar University P. G.  Extension and Research Centre, Erode. sreedeviareedharan485@gmail.com

Abstract

Subjective trauma is referred to as an individual experience. It is a unique, internal and psychological experience of adistressing event, and values the impact of the event as it is perceived, processed and captured by the individual. Interconnecting subjective trauma with maternal wounds studies female identity against an idealized view on biological mothering carrying unresolved trauma along with the integration of socio-cultural influences. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer in the novel Falling (1973) concentrates on the fractured self of feminine identities not by a single event but by how the social barrier of family affects one individual. The narrative in the subjective nature collects emotional and psychological wounds the character Elizebeth Kamen undergoes. Falling as a novel, reveals maternal influences on this ground, and analyzed with female identity, it covers unprocessed wounds of traumatic memory and analyzes the inter-generational trauma passed maternally to Elizabeth, eventually causing individual trauma that affects her as a survivor, as a weapon and then as a fracture on identity respectively to each generation. The premise of the novel focuses on the falling of a young woman’s breakdown and its historical and cultural anxieties interlinking to subjective and domestic trauma that cross across generations. 

Keywords: Subjective trauma, Maternal wound, Inter-generational trauma, Social barrier, Psychological stress.