Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent: A Contemporary Remap of Women’s Identity
Abstract
Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent is a contemporary feminist text that sheds light on various perceptions, such as women’s identity, trauma, and social misogyny, through the appropriation of historical fiction. This study investigates the text through the lenses of genre theory, feminism, and trauma theory. It demonstrates that the novel faithfully represents a Victorian setting while remaining relevant to post-postmodern readers. The study suggests that the novel appropriates subversive contemporary conventions and simultaneously expresses Victorian themes. It also argues that Perry’s text provides a commentary on the present by integrating the past. Further, this study explores the misogynistic portrayal of women in the novel and concludes that such depiction emphasizes Victorian patriarchy and women’s marginalization. This research highlights the novel’s depiction of trauma as interrelated to identity and examines its influence on the representation of women’s identity. It demonstrates that the novel’s spatial setting evokes traumatic memory and illustrates various responses to trauma through its employment of features and elements of genre fiction.
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