The Fourth Daughter

The Fourth Daughter argues that trauma is an inheritance, passed down through generations and reverberating outward to shape families, silence voices, and distort lives across decades. The novel demonstrates that unresolved suffering does not remain contained within the person who experienced it; instead, it transmits to those who follow, often without their knowledge. Butler also suggests that personal trauma is frequently inseparable from the larger political traumas that shape a family's past, and that healing becomes possible only when the cycle of silence is finally broken. In a narrative spanning 63 years and two continents, the novel traces how violence, whether inflicted by a gunman in Manhattan or an authoritarian state in mid-century Taiwan, leaves wounds that fester over years until they are confronted.

The characters’ lives are defined by the lingering effects of unresolved pain, each trapped in a distinct form of stasis. Liv’s present is dictated by the trauma of surviving a violent shooting, which leaves her with debilitating panic attacks and a fear of the outside world. She describes herself as a “spirit stuck in this world, unable to move on” (6), her life halted by an event she cannot process. Her grandmother, Yi-ping, endures a different kind of immobilization, having “spent sixty-three years mourning the loss of my daughter” (23), a grief so profound that resolving it becomes the central mission of her life. Her trauma is not a single event but a sustained absence, a wound reopened daily. The narrative parallels their stories with Ziyi's hidden suffering: decades of abuse by her powerful KMT husband, violence she endures in silence to protect her children. These struggles demonstrate how unresolved trauma isolates people, trapping them in cycles of fear and grief; each woman exists in a private hell.

The novel also illustrates how trauma transmits across generations, often without the knowledge of those who inherit it. The children of the Ong/Huang family carry burdens they did not create and still do not fully grasp. George learns only as an adult that his mother was executed and his sister adopted; Clare harbors decades of misplaced resentment, not knowing her biological connection to Po-wei. Ang-Li's decision to protect his children through secrecy, changing their name and withholding their history, was an act of love, yet it perpetuated the family’s trauma through silence, which becomes its own form of wound.

The narrative deepens this exploration by linking personal trauma to the collective trauma of Taiwan's history under martial law. The political violence of the White Terror is both a historical backdrop and the direct cause of the characters’ pain. Ang-Li's family is shattered when his wife, Jin, is falsely imprisoned and executed, forcing him to flee with his children. Yi-ping's husband can give their daughter away with impunity because his family's KMT status grants unchecked power. Ziyi's husband beats her for years without consequence because his political position shields him from accountability. By connecting private suffering to public histories of oppression, the novel argues that individual pain is often a symptom of larger societal wounds. Personal and political trauma are not parallel but intertwined, each reinforcing the other.

Healing, the novel suggests, requires breaking the enforced silence that allows trauma to perpetuate. Yi-ping's refusal to stop searching for Yili is an act of resistance against the family's demand that she forget. Ziyi's eventual confession to Liv about poisoning her husband breaks decades of concealment. The reunion between Yi-ping and Yili after 63 years is offered as proof that even the deepest wounds can begin to heal when truth is finally spoken. The novel ultimately argues that trauma's weight, however enduring, can be lifted not by forgetting but by remembering together.