The Traumatised Self in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day : Analysing identity and trauma by using psychoanalysis and trauma theory

Abstract: This thesis examines individual and collective trauma in Elizabeth Bowen’s novel The Heat of the Day, published in 1948. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse how the duality of identities is portrayed, and which elements of repression compulsion and individual and collective trauma are present in Elizabeth Bowen’s novel The Heat of the Day by using elements from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory and Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory as theoretical frameworks. This thesis argues that the characters’ fragmented identities caused by repression compulsions as a result of individual and collective traumas reflect the individual and the wider society’s difficulties in recovering from the collective war trauma and defining a new postwar identity. Thus, this thesis suggests that Bowen’s novel could be read as an anti-war novel.