Abusive Husband Research Articles

Exploring Gender Constructs in Media Narratives

This paper seeks to examine the discourse of women who have experienced marital violence as depicted in Moroccan media. Specifically, we will investigate how these women justify their discourse through authorization, aiming to construct arguments that portray them as victims and vilify their abusive husbands. Our analysis focuses on content from Medi 1TV, particularly the talk show "Qesset Nnass" (the story of people), where women articulate their viewpoints through authorization, conveying messages that require contextual understanding for interpretation. Our research is guided by the premise that the interaction between media and audience is intricate and significant, serving as a platform for women to validate their experiences while challenging the actions of their abusers, and providing Moroccans with an avenue to express their perspectives on these issues. Consequently, we aim to assess the effectiveness of these women's persuasive efforts within the show. Given the nature of our topic, our research employs a combination of methodologies. While we utilize a qualitative approach to analyze the discourse of the women subjected to violence through direct observation, we also employ a quantitative method to examine audience comments. This methodological approach enables us to explore the relationship between media content and public opinion, shedding light on the extent of its mutual and direct influence.

‘I don’t like it, but I won’t leave home’: Interpersonal Factors Restricting Married Women in Rural Zimbabwe From Reporting Intimate Partner Violence

This study explores interpersonal factors that negatively impact married women’s reporting of intimate partner violence. Using the snowball sampling, the data were collected from 12 married women who had suffered intimate partner violence. The findings revealed many interpersonal factors that affect intimate partner abuse reporting, such as the length of the marriage, fear of criminal victimisation, physical impairments, trivialisation of certain types of abuse and a lack of awareness about intimate partner violence. The study calls for the need to build married women’s resilience and mobilise resources to improve their socio-economic status and break their economic dependence on abusive husbands.

The Struggle for Justice for Battered Women: Still a Colossal Work in Progress, as Exemplified by Helen Naslund’s Case

This article recounts the campaign for justice for Helen Naslund, a Canadian woman who lived in rural Alberta when she killed her abusive husband Miles in 2011 as he slept. Rather than go to trial on self-defence, on the advice of counsel Helen pled guilty to manslaughter and then, consequent to a joint submission on sentencing made with the Crown, she was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2020, the longest sentence on record for such a woman in Canada. The contributors to Helen’s journey, including Helen herself, a Senator, an academic, an activist, a lawyer and a journalist, all describe the roles they played in supporting Helen’s successful appeal against sentence in 2022 and her release from prison in 2023.

The Iltani Archive and the Messiness of Spousal Violence

The Old Babylonian archive of Iltani, a royal woman living in Qaṭṭara (Tell Al-Rimah), offers a glimpse into the messiness that often surrounds gendered violence. The archive attests to two distinct cases of spousal violence against women – namely, Iltani and her acquaintance Belessunu. When only her case is considered, Iltani may appear uncomplicated, a righteous victim. However, this neat and flat narrative is greatly complicated by her demonstrated resistance to helping Belessunu leave her abusive husband, despite Iltani’s personal history and unique ability to intervene. Letters from Belessunu and a mutual friend of the two, Azzu, offer a rare opportunity to read conversations between ancient West Asian women in response to gendered violence, and these relationships too are messy. The correspondence demonstrates that spousal violence could alternatively strengthen or strain female friendships, and offers the possibility of studying spousal violence in a way that decenters the violent (male) spouse. Despite the remarkable attestation of a women’s support network in the Old Babylonian period, it appears that the network failed to achieve its aims, whereas Yarim-Lim, a man who identifies as Belessunu’s ‘brother,’ succeeded in meeting their initial goal.

Pretty Young Gentleman: Margery Pinchwife's Queer Embodiment in The Country Wife

Abstract: Margery Pinchwife's cross-dressed appearance at the New Exchange in the third act of The Country Wife serves as a crucial turning point for the play's titular character, exposing her to queer pleasures and possibilities. By considering her within the context of the career and reputation of Elizabeth Boutell, who originated the role in 1675, and the ways in which breeches roles were constructed on the Restoration stage, Wycherley's naïve heroine proves to be a model of genderqueer embodiment, even as she is used as a pawn in the games of male homosociality that drive many queer readings of the play. A careful examination of the gender collages that Margery produces over the course of the play highlights her genderqueer potential, running counter to the commonly held view of her as little more than the silly, sheltered wife of a jealous and abusive husband. Rather, Margery stretches the boundaries of gender-sexuality despite the patriarchal hierarchies that try to contain her, illustrating the potential agency granted by gender non-conformity.

‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’ Roman divorce as a deterrent to intimate partner violence

ABSTRACT A number of scholars have in recent years suggested that the ease of divorce in Roman law and the legal provisions for the return of the dowry would have acted as an effective deterrent to intimate partner violence (IPV). This argument rests on two main assumptions. The first is that Roman divorce was quick, easy, and financially damaging for the husband. The second is that IPV was a legitimate reason for divorce and was widely condemned in Roman society. This paper argues against these assumptions and instead suggests that in cases involving IPV, divorce was unlikely to have been quick and easy but rather was a lengthy process, with women often asked to return to marriages and adapt their own behaviour to try to mollify their abusive husbands. In some cases, women will never have left. For deterrents to be effective they must be applied regularly and consistently. Accordingly, Roman divorce cannot be considered an effective deterrent to IPV.

Let the Timid Speak: The Woman/Nature Metaphor in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat”

This article explores Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” (1926) from an ecofeminist perspective. When it comes to the role of nature in Hurston’s writing, ecocritical as well as feminist discussions often romanticize the role of nature in the lives of Hurston’s characters. Hurston’s short story “Sweat,” however, has generally been overlooked by ecocritics and ecofeminists, despite the fact that the story’s female protagonist Delia is repeatedly linked with nature or animals in the text. The aim of this paper is thus to examine the manner in which the main character Delia as well as her abusive husband Sykes are associated with nature, including animals, in order to critically assess the abuse Delia is subjected to. Particular attention is then devoted to three main parts of the story: Delia’s connection to her pony, the village men’s conversations and their subsequent comparison of Delia to sugar cane as well as Hurston’s reenactment of the fall from the Garden of Eden. Throughout the analysis, the focus is on the presence of dehumanization related to animalization or naturalization as well as on Hurston’s depiction of the dualistic character of the metaphors woman/nature and woman/animal along with the impact such associations have on Hurston’s characters.

Literacy and Liberation in Baby Halder’s A Life Less Ordinary

Autobiographical narratives offer a platform for marginalised voices to express their experiences. A Life Less Ordinary, translated into English in 2006, portrays the life experiences of Baby Halder and sheds light on the experiences of Dalit women. Born into a poverty-stricken family, Halder is forced into marriage and motherhood — a reflection of the expectations imposed on women in her community. The title of the memoir underlines the remarkable journey of a marginalised woman who is anything but ordinary. Due to adverse circumstances, Halder was compelled to leave her home and venture out in search of employment. Becoming a domestic worker helped her earn a living. Her book takes us on a turbulent journey from a childhood in a broken family to being forced into marriage at the tender age of twelve, enduring an abusive husband, and ultimately defying societal norms by leaving him and starting work outside her household. According to Ranajit Guha’s definition of the subaltern, Baby Halder embodies three “attributes of subordination”: gender, caste, and poverty. Halder’s wish to fill the gap left in her formal education motivated her to read and write her life story. This paper explores how literacy opens up opportunities for knowledge, self-discovery, and critical thinking, enabling her to question and challenge the norms that once defined her life. It showcases how education can bring about transformation in the life of a marginalised woman striving for personal and social liberation.

A Speech on The Principles of Social Freedom, delivered in Steinway Hall, Monday, Nov. 20, 1871

Spiritualist, stockbroker, publisher, activist for women’s suffrage, equal rights, and “free love,” Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 –1927) was the first woman nominated to run for President of the United States. The Principles of Social Freedom was delivered to a packed New York City audience in 1871. It called for a revolution in the legal, social, and sexual situation of women, for their liberation from the “despotic” control of men, and for their social freedom to live and love as they might choose. Mrs. Woodhull based this radical reimagining of social norms on America’s own values of freedom and equality, and she found a historical precedent: “Men do not seem to comprehend that they are now pursuing toward women the same despotic course that King George pursued toward the American colonies.” Overtly Christian, optimistic, and forward-looking, Mrs. Woodhull announced the inevitability of political equality between women and men: “Women must rise from their position as ministers to the passions of men to be their equals.” Radically for her era, she called for a social Reconstruction and the sexual freedom of women in and out of marriage, especially their absolute right to control their own reproductive decisions: “I protest against the custom which compels women to give the control of their maternal functions over to anybody.” Mrs. Woodhull’s own history gave credence to her picture of women’s conditions. Married at 15 to an abusive alcoholic philandering husband, obliged to support a bankrupt family with two children, she had forged successful careers as speaker, advisor, healer, Wall Street broker, newspaper publisher, and finally as a dynamic political force. At the time of this speech, Mrs. Woodhull was a declared candidate for President. She had recently argued before a Congressional committee that the the 14th and 15th Amendments established women’s right to vote. Earlier that month, in a much publicized incident, she had been turned away from the polls while attempting to vote in the New York election. In this daring lecture she imagines how true legal and political equality of women will ultimately revolutionize sexual politics, and holds out the promise of a world where social freedom and free love are inevitable.

‘They Died from Misadventure and Accident’: Learning from our Missing Ancestral Failures

White ethnics have fashioned a valorizing narrative of hard-working ancestors playing by the rules and ‘making it.’ This narrative distinguishes between ‘us’ and parasitic ‘them’ (today’s marginalized non-white migrants) in a highly selective fashion. What if we interrogate the universality of the Ellis Island saga? Recovering stories of forgotten people, immigrant ‘failures,’ by applying Carlo Ginzburg’s microhistory approach, reveals many victims in early 1900s America. This paper interrogates these gaps in my maternal grandpa’s family, the Albaneses of Newark. My grandpa had an older sister (born in Italy) only everyone swears there was no Maria, even though there she is in the 1910 census, 19-year-old lamp-factory worker. Then I discovered in November 1910, there was a horrible Aetna Lamp Factory fire, two blocks from their home. This fire resulted in 27 deaths, three months before the better-known Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Was this why Maria disappeared? Another sister fled an abusive husband, only to be threatened with prosecution under the Mann Act for crossing state lines for ‘immoral purposes.’ Then there was brother Ben, riding freight cars for years before ending up in an L.A. flophouse. Other invisible immigrants appear in brief newspaper notices, as of a 19-year-old striker shot in the back by Pinkertons, or runaway men whose photos called out from the ‘gallery of missing husbands.’ Revealing industrial-age microhistories of loss and trauma can (potentially) resurrect empathy toward today’s migrants or remind us of the hefty blood price capitalism exacted from workers, in 1910 no less than 2023.

The Anxiety in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You

This study aims to explain the anxiety of Meena, the main character in When I Hit You novel. This study focuses on how the anxiety is experienced by the main character in the novel. Using the types of anxiety as well as descriptive qualitative methods, the writer finds that Meena as the main character in the novel experiences three types of anxiety which are neurotic anxiety, moral anxiety, and realistic anxiety. The types of anxiety experienced by Meena can be seen in the feeling of tense and restless, the feeling of shame, guilt and worry, and also the fears of her abusive husband.

TRAUMA THEORY IN MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT’S MARIA

Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, asserts and protests strenuously against the rigid laws that enslave women. The piece of work sheds light on the prevailing morality, which believes that chastity, repentance and submission should be the only virtues of women. Mary Wollstonecraft’s posthumous work is equipped with such powerful political statements. Maria’s character is nothing but a written defence against her oppressive and abusive husband’s misconducts against her. Wollstonecraft pens this feminist manifesto to denounce the numerous wrongs that are done to women. Her proclamation stands tall, demanding women’s right to be free of male oppression. In this research work, we would like to draw not only on the measurements of Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman but also take a different path, focusing on a theme that is central to the novel and its feminist politics which has received little attention so far: trauma. The novel is a structuring of intertwined life events of suffering and ruptured relationships. We would here delve deep into the novel; the protagonist’s life events and the writer’s concerns through Trauma Theory.

Florence Kelley: Pragmatist, Feminist, Socialist

Florence Kelley: Pragmatist, Feminist, Socialist

“I Used to Think We Were the Same Person:” Disrupting the Ideal Nuclear Family Myth through Incest, Adultery and Gendered Violence in Taboo (2017-)

The nuclear family consolidated its social status as the institution upholding the national, capitalist and moral values of Western societies in the long nineteenth century (Kohlke and Gutleben 2010, 1). Consequently, neo-Victorian literary and screen texts often try to challenge the idealised conceptualization of this institution by bringing to the fore its potential dysfunctionalities, such as monstrous or negligent parents, domestic violence, incest or adultery. This is the case of the TV series Taboo (2017-), which portrays a dysfunctional family whose foundations are based on colonialism, patriarchal violence and Oedipal relations. In this article, I examine Taboo as a neo-Victorian narrative of family trauma, which foregrounds and criticizes gendered violence, a phenomenon that was silenced in nineteenth-century literary and historical records (Lawson and Shakinovsky 2012a, 1). Moreover, I also scrutinise the incest trope, following Llewellyn’s three-fold approach (2010), based on a triangulation between ethics, aesthetics and psychoanalysis. Finally, I consider how Taboo reproduces the most characteristic traits of nineteenth-century adultery novels, so as to expose the sexual dissatisfaction of its female protagonist, Zilpha Delaney, and her desire to escape from her abusive and oppressive husband. As I show in this article, Taboo manages to disrupt the myth of the nuclear family as a natural and indisputable moralising institution. Likewise, at first, the series shows potential feminist and post-colonial drives, as it attempts to denounce nineteenth-century imperialist and misogynistic ideologies within the family. However, Taboo fails to grant its heroine independence and female empowerment in the end. This is so because it replicates the ending of nineteenth-century adultery novels, where the adulterous wife committed suicide after being rejected by her lover.

Gender Oppression and the Consequent Madness in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys, through her ground breaking novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, portrays the journey of a French Creole woman Antoinette from a troubled childhood to her eventual culmination into madness. This novel is a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre and was published in England in 1966. Jean Rhys’s protagonist Antoinette is the representation of the character “Bertha” in the novel Jane Eyre. Through this novel, Jean has given Bronte’s “Bertha” a chance to tell her side of the story of how she ended up in the attic alone and mad which finally ended up in her demise. Madness is an inherent theme which plays an important role and also acts as a consequence of gender oppression. This paper intends to study the inherent gender oppression that the protagonist Antoinette faces from her husband and the consequent madness that follows from this oppression in Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Through a detailed analysis this paper tries to investigate how Antoinette’s husband Mr. Rochester, by his patriarchal male supremacy and domination, oppressed Antoinette to the point that she not only lost her identity but also slipped into madness. The main motive of this paper is to show how Antoinette’s culmination into madness is not just a result of mental illness but also the result of long repressed scars of her traumatic upbringing which are exacerbated by her husband's rejection and cruel behaviour of her which completely erodes her self-esteem ultimately culminating into madness. This paper attempts to prove that Antoinette's abusive patriarchal husband drives her "mad" on purpose and his view of Antoinette as "mad" is the result of her not living up to his Victorian standards of restrained sexuality.

Gothic Fault-Lines in Anne Brontë’s Social Fiction: The Case of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Anne Brontë’s second novel, has always been the object of much scholarly attention, particularly as regards what was originally thought to be a structural flaw: the use of a frame narrative within which the story of Helen Huntingdon’s flight from a disastrous marriage is embedded. The frame narrator, Gilbert Markham, tells a traditional courtship tale which abruptly turns into Helen’s metanarrative of domestic horror. Recent scholarship has concerned itself with this split in discourse which suggests that Brontë does not challenge the conventional idea that discursive authority is masculine, making it therefore difficult to read her novel as feminist. Studies alternately focus on Brontë’s bold enterprise (the vindication in the metanarrative of a woman’s right to leave an abusive husband) or on the limitations generated by her decision to resort to a male frame narrator. This paper addresses the implications of the novel’s apparently flawed structure, notably exploring the uncertainty surrounding the improvement of Gilbert’s moral character after his reading of Helen’s diary. It contends that critical disagreement on whether or not The Tenant is a feminist novel and the embedded narrative the instrument of Gilbert’s reformation, originates, at least partially, in the generic tension at work within Brontë’s novel, and the presence of Gothic fault-lines. Anne Brontë appears unwilling to espouse realism and social criticism which, if fully embraced, might imply forgoing valued (and cherished) Gothic modes of storytelling. The uneasy co-existence of social realism and Gothic remnants (prominent in the choice of structure and modes of characterisation) may then lie at the heart of the novel’s multi-faceted ambiguity.

Reflecting and Regretting

This is the story of an elderly woman who suffers from dementia and has endured a lifetime of abuse from her husband. As the tale unfolds, we learn about this old woman’s tragic history, and of the attempts her doctor has made over the years to help her. The ethical issues the doctor struggles with, his emotions, as well as the strategic dilemmas he is forced to confront as he plans and manages the treatment and care of the husband and the wife create an unsettling backdrop to a story of patient and doctor behaviour. Ethical emotional and professional dilemmas when treating an abusive husband and his wife are discussed in detail.

La pasión esclava: alianzas masoquistas en La Regenta

La pasión esclava: alianzas masoquistas en La Regenta

Cool Yourself and Be Strong: Emotional Fixes in the Work of Bangladeshi Marriage Advisers

AbstractBuilding on Andrea Pia's notion of the ethical fix, this article shows how emotional fixes are used to bring emotions into balance at a feminist nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Promoting a noninterventionist stance in which its advisers do not directly tell their clients what to do, the NGO provides legal advice and counseling to women facing problems in their marriages. Emotional fixes include building clients’ inner strength, cooling emotions, and shaming abusive husbands. These fixes enable the advisers to reconcile what appears from the outside to be contradictory positions: feminism, on the one hand, and adherence to hierarchical kinship norms, on the other. This means that more intractable issues are avoided and the potentially contradictory ethical stances of the advisers are obscured. Client emotions are malleable and fluid, and injunctions by advisers for clients to cultivate particular states, such as ‘coolness’ can work in a range of ways. While the antipolitics of the emotional fix can cut both ways—concealing both emancipatory and conservative politics ‐ like Pia's ethical fixthe emotional fix itself remains piecemeal and fragile.

Prize for the Fire: A Novel by Rilla Askew

Reviewed by: Prize for the Fire: A Novel by Rilla Askew W. M. Hagen Rilla Askew Prize for the Fire: A Novel Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2022. 369 pages. IS MARTYRDOM FATED, a choice, both? Thus the parameters of Rilla Askew's new novel, whose title and prologue leave no doubt of the end. Circumstances certainly push Anne Askew (no known relation) toward her death in 1546. Her lowborn, abusive husband creates a private hell at home, impelling her, as a woman of intelligence and determination, to take more public actions. She grows from debilitating doubt to an overwhelming faith, to the point of believing scripture should prevail over royal policy and the laws of the land. One recognizes Anne as a type: the young protagonist, acting out, endangering herself and her family. As in such stories set in the segregated South, one thinks, "Weren't you taught you just can't do that?" You think this, even though you are sympathetic with the protagonist and might wish conditions were better. Given her horrible home situation, Anne's impulses are plausible: to seek help from her brothers, to sneak off, to appeal to hostile authorities for a divorce. The fact [End Page 61] that her husband destroys her translated Bible and she is denied her maid, to whom she read passages privately, pushes her to read a very public Bible in the cathedral, out loud, attracting villagers and the local vicar. Later, in London, reciting memorized passages in meetings is construed as preaching by the examining councils, something forbidden for women. The fact that she has a superior command of biblical passages helps seal her fate. Askew varies the point of view, so that the reader does not become too trapped inside Anne. Some chapters feature limited third-person accounts focusing on one of the brothers or her maid; some feature an omniscient narrator; some jump into stream of consciousness. Two well-placed chapters display the real risks of political involvement: a conversation among the wives and then the somewhat naïve expectations of advancement shown, in a separate room, by their increasingly inebriated husbands. The women show a keener sense of the sufferings of the past and what will likely come. The attention to the clothing, appearance, crowds in the ceremony, and court scenes is quite impressive, as is the author's handling of the very real issue of the Eucharist. Anne articulates the Reformist view of the elements as symbolically representing the body and blood of Christ, while her maid, Beatrice, emphasizes how important it is for traditional believers that the bread and wine are consecrated by the priest. The novel shows the risks of a firmly confessed faith in a time of political and religious change. And neither does Rilla Askew flinch from articulating the likely consequences for families and friends when one person maintains such a faith to the end. W. M. Hagen Oklahoma Baptist University Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma