Traumatized Psyche and Mental Underrepresentation in Joyce Carol Oates We Were the Mulvaneys

Abstract

Sexual trauma is depicted using conventional storylines. However, Joyce Carol Oates used a different strategy in her book We Were the Mulvaneys to highlight the severity of the trauma: mental underrepresentation. Marianne's ideas visually resemble a black mark that weakens Marianne's intellect and retards the trauma. Judd, the narrator, utilizes the mark to demonstrate how Marianne's mental pain impacts him and undermines his sense of self as a narrator as well as to tell the story of a traumatized mind. Oates' work is all the more significant because of this type of mental underrepresentation, which improves our comprehension of trauma.