”Trauma is shaped not only by sexual violence – but by everything around it”

Ghost narrators reveal what is often silenced

In her thesis, Unquiet Afterlives: Ghosts Narrating Rape Trauma in Contemporary Swedish and American Fiction (1990–2018), Lillhannus examines four novels in which the dead themselves – in the form of ghost narrators – recount the sexual violence and trauma that shaped their lives. Through these texts, she demonstrates how rape trauma is socially produced: how shame and guilt emerge in relationships, and in the ways others interpret, respond to or question what has happened.

The novels she studies – Carina Rydberg’s Osalig ande (1990), Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002), and Sara Stridsberg’s Kärlekens Antarktis (The Antarctica of Love, 2018) – span different contexts and decades but share a common narrative structure. The ghost narrator reflects on her life and observes how the living characters attempt to understand, explain or suppress what occurred. According to Lillhannus, this ghostly position between life and death reveals something central about how trauma is formed.

“The ghost shows what it means to be both invisible and hyper-visible at the same time,” she explains. “A victim may be highly visible in the public eye – in the media, in rumours, in sensationalised accounts – but in ways that do not align with her own memories or sense of self. At the same time, the ghost narrators describe how they are rendered invisible by those from whom they most long for support. In the tension between this invisibility and unwanted exposure, a double exclusion emerges.”

Rape myths that distort our understanding of trauma

Lillhannus argues that fiction exposes both the myths that trivialise sexual violence and those that frame it as something extreme and distant – such as the belief that assaults occur only in dark alleyways or are committed by monstrous strangers. These different types of rape myths reinforce one another and shape how sexual violence is understood, and how victims interpret their own experiences.

“These myths reinforce one another in harmful ways,” she says. “Literature can make visible the assumptions that are deeply embedded in our thinking – ideas we rarely reflect upon, yet which continue to influence us.”

Here, the perspectives of the ghost narrators come into particularly sharp focus. They show how trauma is shaped not only by what happened, but by how the surrounding world responds. Shame may arise in a mother’s silence, a partner’s doubt, a society’s minimisation of what occurred, or a justice system that searches for contradictions rather than understanding. And the ways in which the media portray – or fail to portray – sexual violence can turn a person into a character in someone else’s story.

Fiction highlights what society often overlooks

These insights, Lillhannus argues, are vital for healthcare and legal professionals. No one tells their story in a vacuum. A victim carries with her a repertoire of cultural images, norms and expectations about what sexual violence “is” – and who counts as a “real” victim.

“This shapes the story a person dares to tell,” she explains. “A therapist or investigator does not only meet an individual – they encounter an entire cultural backdrop that has already told her what rape is supposed to mean, and how she is expected to react.”

When asked who most urgently needs to engage with her research, she points to the media:

“Journalists have enormous power to shape public narratives about sexual violence – and certain ways of telling these stories can cause harm. A single choice of wording or narrative framing can reinforce damaging myths or place blame on the victim, even when this is not intended.”

Towards the end of the interview, she summarises the core of her work in a single sentence – one that reflects both her analysis and her methodology:

“Trauma is shaped in relationships. Literature helps us understand how.”

Lillhannus’s thesis demonstrates how fiction—despite, or perhaps because of, its supernatural elements—illuminates what so often remains unspoken, and by allowing the dead to speak, renders the responsibilities of the living unmistakably clear—responsibilities that, like the ghosts in these narratives, do not easily fade away.