Lost Children: Hearing the Past in the Silence of an Empty House

Abstract

This article analyses Maggie Gee’s novel Lost Children (1994) from the combined perspectives of feminist and trauma theories. It contends that the sudden disappearance of the protagonist’s teenage daughter triggers a psychological quest for the recovery of her voice and self, shattered by a traumatic experience she had in her childhood. My analysis, which pays especial attention to narratological issues —since this barely perceptible, insidious trauma is expressed both formally and thematically— shows that Alma’s behaviour is representative of the worries, expectations and impositions that contemporary children and women are subject to in western society, still imbued by patriarchal models and rules of behaviour.

Keywords

• trauma
• gender roles
• psychological quest
• identity
• motherhood