ABSTRACT
Kossew considers the complex and intersectional nature of victimhood, agency and survivorship in her analysis of an Australian woman’s literary text, Zoë Morrison’s Music and Freedom (2016). Deploying Rebecca Stringer’s argument that the term ‘victim’ does not have to imply that women who have been subjected to violence have no agency and are completely disabled by it, this chapter suggests that Morrison’s protagonist is an example of a victim/survivor. Through her analyses, Kossew addresses the permeability of the public/private binary and the recognition of a continuity of violence between intimate, interpersonal violence and systemic, institutional forms of violence. Thus, the author argues that Morrison’s novel illustrates well the spectrum of the category of victim and the agency that telling one’s story may engender; while, at the same time, constitutes a testimony of how to reject the fear of stigma, shame and failure that often prevents white middle-class victims from breaking with notions of propriety and the need to keep up appearances.
