Reviewing Trauma Theory through Health Humanities: A Reading of Select Narratives on Miscarriage

Abstract

Miscarriage as a form of reproductive loss and trauma constitutes a pervasive yet culturally marginalized phenomenon. Traditional trauma theory has been instrumental in elucidating the psychic impact of catastrophic events, yet its primary focus on extraordinary events such as war and assault excludes reproductive trauma, including miscarriage. This exclusion results in miscarriage trauma being largely unacknowledged in public and clinical domains, thereby exacerbating psychological suffering and complicating recovery. The health humanities paradigm introduces a novel framework that repositions trauma as a lived, embodied, and socially mediated phenomenon. This shift expands trauma discourse beyond the realm of psychic fragmentation and foregrounds embodied experience, meaning-making, and ethical care.

This study integrates trauma theory and health humanities to investigate miscarriage trauma through literary representations in selected narratives on miscarriage. The texts examined provide rich narrative spaces that convey miscarriage as embodied suffering embedded in socially fraught and culturally silenced contexts. This integrated framework elucidates the limits of trauma theory when used in isolation and highlights the scope of health humanities in expanding understandings of reproductive trauma by incorporating questions of embodiment and relationality. 

This study examines how these novels portray miscarriage as trauma, assessing the explanatory power and limitations of trauma theory regarding narrative disruption and delayed grief, and demonstrating how health humanities expand trauma discourse by validating embodied grief. This study explores the role of literary narratives as testimonial forums that resist disenfranchisement and offer a platform for social recognition and healing. This approach has significant implications for reconfiguring clinical practices and literary criticism, fostering more holistic representations and responses to miscarriage trauma.