168299 20260202151222.0 doi 10.4000/150ry sideral 147775 ART-2025-147775 eng Nadal-Ruiz, Alejandro Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0001-5620-8300 Whispers of History: The Challenges of Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma in Jean Rhys’s After Leaving Mr Mackenzie 2025 This article examines the representation of transgenerational transmissions of trauma in Jean Rhys’s interwar novel After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930). It explores the female protagonist’s struggle to understand her sense of alienation in relation to an unspoken history of suffering and neglect within her family. The protagonist’s encounter with her family is analysed as a deeply ambivalent moment where trauma’s lingering presence disrupts rather than enables the transmission of history and affect across generations. In keeping with contemporary approaches to Rhys focusing on the relational dimension of her work, my analysis tackles how the narrative depicts the heroine’s attempt to restore the fractured relationship with her family by struggling to decipher their experience of trauma. Drawing on Meera Atkinson’s “poetics of transgenerational trauma,” this article addresses the ambiguities inherent in the encounters between https://sideral.unizar.es/sideral/sid139buscarArticulo.faces#ancestors and descendants, revealing their paradoxical role as both catalysts for the transmission of traumatic affect and reminders of the impossibility of fully grasping or articulating inherited trauma. In so doing, this study foregrounds the opacity of Rhys’s female characters alongside the eerie, elusive nature of her poetics where silence and disruptions in language not only reflect the enduring impact of trauma, but also expose the challenges of transmitting it through storytelling. Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by-nc-nd https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.es info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion 3004 345 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema. Área Filología Inglesa 38 (2025), [26 pp.] Sillages crit. (Paris) Sillages critiques (Paris) 1272-3819 332713 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/168299/files/texto_completo.pdf Postprint 1522921 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/168299/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Postprint oai:zaguan.unizar.es:168299 articulos driver 2026-02-02-14:40:15 ARTICLE