Sartrean Insights on Understanding the Repercussions of Rape Trauma in the Gripping Narratives of Roxanne Gay and Neesha Arter

Abstract

Women have been subjugated to violence from time immemorial. One of the most horrific forms of violence is sexual violence and rape. Their voice was not heard until the rise of second wave feminism which began around 1970. Women started to write about their experiences in the form of memoirs to bring to light the atrocities of rape and the implications of trauma and its impact. Sexual assault inflicts profound psychological and emotional wounds that give rise to a condition referred to as ‘Rape Trauma”. Rape Trauma Syndrome includes of a wide range of physical and psychological signs such as insomnia, nightmare, flashbacks, anxiety, and depression and so on and they last for a long period of time in one’s life. The research uses two memoirs written by American women, Roxanne Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of my Body (2017) and Neesha Arter’s Controlled: The worst Night of my Life and its Aftermath (2015). The research uses Sartre’s perspective on embodiment, freedom, self to analyse rape trauma. The research uses Jean Paul Sartre’s concept to analyse the immense effects of rape trauma on the lives of the two women as documented in their memoirs. Using the framework provided by Constance L. Mui, the research delineates how rape trauma destroys the fundamental project of the protagonists and how rape trauma annihilates an individual from her own body and isolates her from the world.