Handling Trauma: Charlie Fox and Jessica Jones

Why do these characters stand out for me, when it comes to the way trauma is explored or expressed within a narrative?

First of all, it’s that they have a voice, and a nuanced one at that. Secondly, that their voices persist. As rape survivors, their experiences fill and inform the writing, from start to finish, not as a plot point inserted into the vacuum of a single chapter or episode.

Let’s start with Zoe Sharp’s Charlie Fox.

There are so many books, so many films, where Charlie’s character is the five minute opening motivation for (a male) someone else. Her contribution to narrative a sacrificial sketch. A body to experience the act of trauma itself, maybe the immediate aftermath and fall out, only to be discarded for the remainder of the story. Yes, there might be a brief return at the end to pin the metaphorical medal of justice-will-be-done upon the protagonist’s chest. But she’s a pretext for someone else’s act of rescue or revenge. Her own place in it all, erased.

But not with Zoe Sharp.

In Killer Instinct, book one of a series, the narrative sits squarely with Charlie, ex-special forces trainee. The voice centered is that of the survivor as protagonist, how she feels, and this never waivers.

More than that, although there’s much-needed nuance around flashbacks and on-going power of such events, the act of trauma itself is part of the past. The rape doesn’t take place in real time on-page for the reader. And especially not with the kind of queasy pornified lingering over that person’s fear that seems to dominate so many tv portrayals in the name of realism. A profoundly psychological event narrowed to physical spectacle and commodified shock tactics.

Rather, like Jessica Jones, the focus is on the long-term aftermath; the unfolding twisty bumpy path of individual recovery that re-orientates the character around their hard-won sense of self, not the rape event itself. There are no simple fixes, no quick shortcuts, and no perscriptive way of dealing with it. Just long ongoing work and a deep sense of understanding for the ways in which its ripple effects touch everything else that happens after.

Most-especially, having experienced deep violation, the characters’ responses to being threatened again are shown to be forever changed. Knowing intimately the cost of such events, the freeze or flight reflex is replaced by an intense instinct to fight, at all costs.

And the instinct to protect others from the same, in a way they themselves were not.

Charlie Fox’s story begins with her fight to uncover a new predator attacking vulnerable women in her local area, where she works as a self-defence instructor. Meanwhile, gifted but self-destructive PI, Jessica Jones, faces the return of her past rapist and stalker, who is intent on establishing control once more.

Both protagonists experience significant physical and emotional costs to defeating opponents a second time round. But, as survivors, they reject further surrender to reach a new sense of agreement with themselves and their futures. And, although the past events will always be a significant part of their identity, they are also not the sum of it.

Circumstances may have set them on this path, but they choose where they go next.

Too often trauma in books and film is treated as a passing event. Hastily sketched in limited dimensions without a real exploration of impact on identity or decision making. And the narrative is poorer for it.

After all, only through better writing of trauma, can we in turn explore, depict and celebrate resilience in the way it truly deserves.