ТРАУМАТА И БОЛКАТА КАКО ИЗВОРИ НА ЖЕНСКОТО ИСКУСТВО ВО РОМАНИТЕ ОБВИНЕТА НА СЛАВЕНКА ДРАКУЛИЌ И ОБРАЗОВАНА НА ТАРА ВЕСТОВЕР
TRAUMA AND PAIN: THE CORE OF THE FEMALE EXPERIENCES IN THE ACCUSED BY SLAVENKA DRAKULIC AND EDUCATED BY TARA WESTOVER

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims to trace trauma and pain as female experiences through novels The Accused by Slavenka Drakulic and Educated by Tara Westover. The text will analyze the physical pain through the corpus of gender-based violence, as well as the emotional trauma that nests in the person and manifests itself at different stages throughout life. Gender equality, domestic violence and the struggle for freedom are key factors for women’s mental health. In the novel The Accused (Antolog, 2022) Slavenka Drakulic writes about the pathological relationship between mother and daughter, the position of victim, unfulfilled dreams, failed love relationships, the cycle of violence, the burden of tradition and the home as a prison through which the three main protagonists struggle in the web of brutality and patriarchy. The characters are based on the archetype of the witch (the grandmother), the femme fatale (the mother), the cliché seducer and Don Juan (the father). The matrix of the fairy tale and stereotyping in the gender discourse supports the violence that is fed by the patriarchal morality through the pathological relationship between the characters. The theme of victims of gender-based violence is also addressed through the narrative thread of Tara Westover’s novel Educated (Tri, 2020), where psychological terror and domestic violence are broken through the religious dogmatism of a Mormon family. The pain, melancholy and the struggle for gender equality are common themes of both books, The Accused and Educated, by two women authors who live and write in completely different cultural environments. Trauma is, in fact, the common denominator of both literary works, as a fabric from which female subjectivity and identity are built.

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