Abstract:
The article analyzes the female characters in American writer Richard Yates’s debut novel “Revolutionary Road” as an artistic projection of transgenerational trauma, which involves clarifying the mother’s impact on her adult child’s romantic relationship and family life. The work depicts the exhausting relationship of a young couple who lives in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, goes through a deep relationship crisis, and experiences a fatal tragedy, falling into the trap of illusions. R. Yates focuses not only on the unfolding of the family drama but also suggests possible reasons for the characters’ actions rooted in the previous generation, thereby prompting the choice of the interpretative strategy. The article aims to characterize the female characters in the novel “Revolutionary Road” as an artistic projection of transgenerational trauma and determine the specifics of the author’s psychologization strategy. The methodological foundation of the study is M. Wolynn’s work “It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We are and How to End the Cycle”, which identifies inherited family patterns and substantiates the transgenerational nature of traumatic experience. This interpretative strategy made it possible to outline the artistic projection of family trauma patterns in R. Yates’s novel “Revolutionary Road” and allowed us to identify the role of the main character’s family history in shaping her behavioral models. In particular, April Wheeler’s early disconnection with her mother, the lack of parental attention, and her being raised by several caregivers caused a fear of losing intimacy, emotional instability, inability to love Frank truly, desire to terminate two pregnancies, and the decision to commit suicide. The unresolved internal conflicts and unawareness of the inherited trauma deprived the main female character of the opportunity to improve her family life, which led to the tragedy. Though Frank’s upbringing in a two-parent family and acceptance of his parents contributed to his emotional stability, it was not enough to build a happy family and save his wife from death. Visualizing the main character’s relationship with her parents allowed the author to create convincing fictional images and achieve a high level of psychologization.
