NCJ Number
224748
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 14 Issue: 10 Dated: October 2008 Pages: 1166-1180
Date Published
October 2008
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This article explores some of the narrative devices that batterers use to achieve a sense of coherence when telling their stories and justifying their violent behavior.
Abstract
The life stories described in this article demonstrate how battering husbands attempted to introduce order into their emotional lives through constructing a prescriptive narrative for their wives. As the results show, this narrative proved to be rigid and incompatible with reality and serves as an underlying factor in the subsequent violence toward their wives. When telling their life stories and describing the devastation of their marital relationships, each of the battering men participating presented themselves as the protagonist and their wives as the antagonist. In the stories presented in this study, it is witnessed men whose confrontations with their wives’ contrasting narratives raise self-doubt, ambivalence, and confusion about the world, and the attempt to tame their wives takes a more concrete and forceful turn, physical violence. Constructing a life story is a need shared by all humans to give their lives meaning and coherence. Battering husbands often experience a sense of incoherence and disintegration in their lives when forced to confront marital difficulties or divorce resulting from their abusive behavior. These feelings, and the attempts to deal with them, are reflected in their narratives about their lives or how they tell their life story. This article examines the strategies used by battering men when telling their life stories. Specifically, it seeks to define how batterers construct and relate the character of their wife in terms of her role in their marriage and the ensuing violence. References