The aim of this paper is to examine how the concepts of trauma and hauntology intertwine each other in the play Beside Herself (1990) by Sarah Daniels – a British contemporary woman playwright. Sarah Daniels’s dramatic plays present the critique of patriarchy as well as the stereotypes and prejudices in contemporary societies (Godiwala 2003: 121). The subject matter of Daniels’s plays is also the problem of violence and abuse towards women (Griffin 2000: 194-211). The main reference for the analysis will be the portrayal of Eve – the inner self of the protagonist Eveline. Incorporating the theory of trauma, the newly developed concept of “trauma culture” (Wald 1995: 95), as well as the concepts of hauntology theory (Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive spectre and Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s phantom) the analysis will concentrate on such factors as: trauma/haunting resulted from child sexual abuse, the figure of the ghost as a part of double personality, the ghost as the personification of traumatic experience not only for the individual but also for the whole mankind and the way in which haunting trauma can involve the further life of the protagonist.
