“The Trials of Briony”: Gothic Desire in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

This article focuses on specific Gothic tropes such as the uncanny and the abject through metafiction and the haunted psyche of Briony Tallis. As a text that engages with the doubling of fiction and reality, Atonement offers a Gothic experience of reading through the conflicted psyche of the protagonist. This article charts the haunted self through repression, abjection and trauma that are evident through Briony’s projection of her emotions onto other characters in the novel. Through such metafictional play, Briony is evidently haunted by her own desire, which manifests itself as abject in her traumatic witnessing of two sexual encounters in 24 hours. Through her fears of becoming the pursued Gothic heroine, Briony is subject to extreme self-policing of her sexuality, which results in the emergence of those desires in a coded, uncanny form. Through psychoanalytic and trauma theory, this article suggests a renewed reading of McEwan’s novel to consider the haunted psyche of his protagonist through her abject narrative of desire, “The Trials of Arabella”