Whiteness and Trauma - The Mother-Daughter Knot in the Fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Theodora

Whiteness and Trauma examines how racial whiteness and psychic injury shape mother–daughter relationships in the fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison. Victoria Burrows uses a knot metaphor to frame tangled yet separable subjectivities, showing how narratives hold relational circuitry, historical pressure, and ambivalent inheritance. Across chapters, the study reads key texts for traumatic ambivalence, voice-seeking, and silence, culminating in a conclusion focused on how meaning survives through what is left unsaid.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages237

Reading Time6 h 5 min

AccessFree to download

Contents

Introduction: Unravelling the Knot

1 ‘The White Hush Between Two Sentences’: The Traumatic Ambivalence of Whiteness in Wide Sargasso Sea

2 Keeping History Safe

3 ‘Caught between Ghosts of Whiteness’: The Other Side of the Story

4 Lucy: Jamaica Kincaid’s Postcolonial Echo

5 The Search for a Voice

6 ‘The Sea Is History’

7 ‘Knots of Death’: Toni Morrison’s Sula

8 Ambivalent Maternal Inheritances

9 The ‘Gift for Metaphor’

Conclusion: A Meditation on Silence

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Whiteness and Trauma The Mother–Daughter Knot in the Fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison Victoria Burrows Whiteness and Trauma Whiteness and Trauma The Mother–Daughter Knot in the Fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison Victoria Burrows © Victoria Burrows, 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identiﬁed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–2198–9 (HB) This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burrows, Victoria, 1951– Whiteness and trauma : the mother–daughter knot in the ﬁction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison / Victoria Burrows. [p. cm](p. cm). Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-4039-2198-9 1. Caribbean ﬁction (English)–Women authors – History and criticism. 2. Women and literature – Caribbean Area – History – 20th century. 3. Women and literature – United States – History – 20th century. 4. Mothers and daughters in literature. 5. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. 6. Human skin color in literature. 7. Psychic trauma in literature. 8. Kincaid, Jamaica, Lucy. 9. Morrison, Toni. Sula. 10. Whites in literature. 11. Race in literature. I. Title. PR9205.4. B87 2004 813¢.540935252 – dc22 2003060958 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne For my mother, Fan; for my children, Lucia, Tansy and Joshua; and for Gail, who made this possible Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction: Unravelling the Knot 1 1 ‘The White Hush Between Two Sentences’: The Traumatic Ambivalence of Whiteness in Wide Sargasso Sea 25 2 Keeping History Safe 41 3 ‘Caught between Ghosts of Whiteness’: The Other Side of the Story 60 4 Lucy: Jamaica Kincaid’s Postcolonial Echo 72 5 The Search for a Voice 86 6 ‘The Sea Is History’ 105 7 ‘Knots of Death’: Toni Morrison’s Sula 114 8 Ambivalent Maternal Inheritances 129 9 The ‘Gift for Metaphor’ 142 Conclusion: A Meditation on Silence 160 Notes 173 Bibliography 205 Index 220 Acknowledgements I wish to thank my colleagues in the Department of English, Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia for their great support during the long gestation of this book, which grew out of my doctoral thesis undertaken in the department. In particular, I want to acknowledge with deep-felt gratitude the inestimable intellectual mentoring and personal afﬁrmation that Gail Jones provided during this time, and also the wonderful help that Judy Skene so willingly gifted with her eagle-eyed proofreading. I would also like to exp

FAQs

What is the central framework of the book?

The book frames mother–daughter relations through the metaphor of a densely threaded knot, emphasizing complexity, separation within entanglement, and relational circuitry shaped by whiteness and trauma.

Which authors’ fiction are analyzed?

Victoria Burrows analyzes the fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison, focusing on how race, history, and psychological injury appear across their texts.

What topics do the chapters primarily explore?

Chapters address traumatic ambivalence of whiteness, the handling of history, the pursuit of voice, key interpretive readings (including Wide Sargasso Sea and Sula), and ambivalent maternal inheritance, ending with a meditation on silence.

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Theodora