E-Thesis 54 views
Little Heaven / VICTORIA HAWKINS
Swansea University Author: VICTORIA HAWKINS
DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUThesis.71171
Abstract
‘Little Heaven’ is a mystery thriller set in a small, eerie village of the same name, exploring themes of homecoming, trauma, family, loss and motherhood. The accompanying critical essay explores the theme of trauma and memory in contemporary thrillers. Drawing upon psychoanalytic notions of repress...
| Published: |
Swansea
2025
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Bilton, A. |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa71171 |
| Abstract: |
‘Little Heaven’ is a mystery thriller set in a small, eerie village of the same name, exploring themes of homecoming, trauma, family, loss and motherhood. The accompanying critical essay explores the theme of trauma and memory in contemporary thrillers. Drawing upon psychoanalytic notions of repressed memories, the exegesis explores ideas of buried trauma and the reliability of recall in both fiction and the real world, concluding that the thriller genre is ultimately predicated on notions of the revealed truth inaccessible to medical and legal practitioners. Both the novel and the essay also explore aspects of the supernatural and the paranormal, investigating the patriarchal notion that the feminine is more susceptible or open to notions of the uncanny. Building on Freud’s ideas, it argues that the familiar site of ‘home’is transformed into something unfamiliar and alien in the text, so that the protagonist’s homecoming is in truth a confrontation with those aspects of the past that lie hidden, and which therefore appear as unknown or other. The role of repression and melancholia in relation to trauma is at the heart of both the novel and the essay, and both explore to what extent healing can be related to an acknowledgement of wounds suffered in the past. |
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| Keywords: |
novel, thesis, trauma, memory, thriller, village |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |