ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that Ragtime challenges patriarchal, capitalist and white supremacist ideology. Most trauma theorists coincide in describing the nature of traumatic symptoms as an intrusive presence of the past in the present that possesses the individual, allowing for little hope of overcoming it. A special character in point when examining Ragtime’s alternative attitude toward trauma is Tateh, a Jewish silhouette artist from Latvia who can barely earn a living with his labor in East End. Apart from exploring Ragtime’s shift of perspective where it comes to the representation of trauma, so far the analysis has also revealed a preoccupation at the level of textual implications with issues of social and economic injustice, racism and oppression. Ragtime offers thought-provoking possibilities from the viewpoint of feminist criticism. Characterization in Ragtime functions as a tool to draw attention to the oppression and, at times, violence that women faced at the turn of the century and which intersects with racial and class discrimination.
