Stolen Girlhoods and Reclaimed Narratives: Sexual Violence, Dissociation, and Feminist Testimony in A Woman and Girl, Woman, Other
Location
Ponderosa Room C
Presentation Type
Presentation
Presentation Topic
Feminist testimony, sexual violence, self-coercion, social/legal contexts against women
Start Date
6-3-2026 11:15 AM
Event Sort Order
29
Abstract
My paper presents a comparative feminist analysis of Sibilla Aleramo’s A Woman (1908) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019), analyzing how narratives of sexual violence against girls function across time to reveal persistent structures of patriarchal silencing, self-coercion, and identity fragmentation. Despite being published over a century apart, both of these texts depict extremely similar patterns in which young girls experience sexual assault, internalize blame, dissociate from their bodies, and are socially conditioned into silence or obeying their abusers.
Centering Aleramo’s narration and Evaristo’s character Carole, this paper explores how girlhood vulnerability is exploited and erased through social narratives that normalize male entitlement and scrutinize women’s behavior, appearance, and credibility. Drawing on comparative analysis, I argue that both authors intentionally disrupt the norms of storytelling and maintain a stable narrative voice to formally mirror their traumatic dissociation and loss of selfhood within the events described. These literary choices refuse the normalized and desensitized consumption of violence and instead position feminist testimony as an act of reclamation.
My paper positions these novels within a broader feminist discourse on sexual violence as a structural, rather than individual phenomenon. Ultimately, this presentation asks what it would mean for women to be unified under terms that do not require loss, silence, or survival as prerequisites for belonging. In emphasizing girlhood as a site of both profound vulnerability and feminist resistance, this project contributes to Women’s and Gender Studies discourse on trauma, narrative ethics, and the political power of women telling their own stories.
Stolen Girlhoods and Reclaimed Narratives: Sexual Violence, Dissociation, and Feminist Testimony in A Woman and Girl, Woman, Other
Ponderosa Room C
My paper presents a comparative feminist analysis of Sibilla Aleramo’s A Woman (1908) and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019), analyzing how narratives of sexual violence against girls function across time to reveal persistent structures of patriarchal silencing, self-coercion, and identity fragmentation. Despite being published over a century apart, both of these texts depict extremely similar patterns in which young girls experience sexual assault, internalize blame, dissociate from their bodies, and are socially conditioned into silence or obeying their abusers.
Centering Aleramo’s narration and Evaristo’s character Carole, this paper explores how girlhood vulnerability is exploited and erased through social narratives that normalize male entitlement and scrutinize women’s behavior, appearance, and credibility. Drawing on comparative analysis, I argue that both authors intentionally disrupt the norms of storytelling and maintain a stable narrative voice to formally mirror their traumatic dissociation and loss of selfhood within the events described. These literary choices refuse the normalized and desensitized consumption of violence and instead position feminist testimony as an act of reclamation.
My paper positions these novels within a broader feminist discourse on sexual violence as a structural, rather than individual phenomenon. Ultimately, this presentation asks what it would mean for women to be unified under terms that do not require loss, silence, or survival as prerequisites for belonging. In emphasizing girlhood as a site of both profound vulnerability and feminist resistance, this project contributes to Women’s and Gender Studies discourse on trauma, narrative ethics, and the political power of women telling their own stories.
Presenter Bio
Katherine Pyle is a senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who is majoring in Human Development and Family Sciences, with minors in Ethnic studies, Women's and Gender studies, and Educational Psychology. Katherine plans to attend graduate school with a focus in Marriage and Family Therapy and one fun fact about her is that she was Born in New York and raised in Houston, Texas!