https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.114
Mourning a Child: Trauma, Gender, and Marital Breakdown in Robert Frost’s “Home Burial” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter”
DR. ARCHANA V.
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur
archana.skvc@gmail.com
Abstract: The loss of a child constitutes one of the most devastating forms of human grief, often disrupting not only individual identity but also the emotional foundations of intimate relationships. This paper examines representations of parental bereavement in Robert Frost’s “Home Burial” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter”, focusing on how child loss produces trauma, gendered responses to mourning, and marital rupture. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s concepts of mourning and melancholia, Cathy Caruth’s theory of trauma as a belated and “unclaimed” experience, Judith Butler’s framework of gender performativity, and Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut’s Dual Process Model of coping with bereavement, the study explores how grief functions as both a psychological and relational crisis. In both texts, parents experience the same loss but grieve through overwhelmingly different emotional and behavioural modes, resulting in silence, alienation, and communicative breakdown. While “Home Burial” presents grief as an isolating force that intensifies emotional estrangement and culminates in marital disintegration, “A Temporary Matter” offers a more nuanced portrayal in which confession and shared vulnerability create a fleeting moment of mutual recognition. The analysis argues that parental bereavement in literature is not merely a private emotional response but a deeply gendered and traumatic experience that destabilises identity, transforms domestic space, and challenges the possibility of emotional intimacy. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that the success or failure of a marriage after child loss depends on the parents’ capacity for mutual recognition, the articulation of grief, and compassionate listening to one another.
Keywords: Child Loss, Parental Grief, Trauma, Gendered Mourning, Marital Breakdown, Emotional Estrangement
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