The Pen is Mightier than the Dominant Discourse: Writing as Agency and Healing in Plath, Gordon, Frame, Marmon Silko, and Hogan

Writing about trauma enables a writer to bear witness and establish authority and voice. Dr. James Pennebaker proved experimentally that writing about trauma, or “scriptotherapy,” can help heal a person both emotionally and physically. However, since language is socially constructed, there is always the danger when writing of trauma that an author unknowingly can help reaffirm the dominant discourse. Sylvia Plath, Janet Frame, and Barbara Gordon are women living as the “other” in the western patriarchal culture; each has survived hospitalization in mental institutions and written of her experience. Native American writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Linda Hogan write about the cultural trauma Pueblo and Osage people have suffered. While Frame’s Faces in the Water gives testimony to her mistreatment as a mental patient, Plath’s The Bell Jar and Gordon’s I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can in many ways support the dominant discourse. Through their novels Ceremony and Mean Spirit, respectively, Marmon Silko and Hogan give voice to their people’s perspective that healing only occurs through connection with community and the earth. This analysis of five texts explores how writing can help marginalized individuals overcome the silence that is a powerful tool of oppression.