Exposer la blessure : la métaphore photographique, expression de la vulnérabilité d’une génération dans l’œuvre de Rosamond Lehmann

Abstract

Rosamond Lehmann’s works hinge on the notion of wound. The modernist writer depicts women who come across as outcasts and whose relationships are bound to fail, owing to the difficulty of understanding each other. Yet, the representation of individuals evolving in a disenchanted world seems to screen the collective trauma of the Great War. During WWI, the British civilian population was faced with photographs of the battlefields which revealed the unbearable horror of countless dead bodies and stood as overwhelming evidence of one’s inherent vulnerability. Lehmann’s writing is fraught with covert references to that visual shock, which lends a ghost-like quality to her novels. Thanks to the creation of a fruitful photographic imagery, the author exposes the fragility of the modern subject while transcending it at the same time. Thus, the photographic metaphor becomes a means to examine and explore the vulnerability of an entire generation, as part of a metaphysical quest about the status of the modern subject.