All the Bones of Her Soul
I’ve been carrying around this article from the Northwest Arkansas Times recently. The headline reads:
Man accused of breaking wife’’s arm
According to the article:
When questioned about her injuries, the victim told police that she drank too much and talked too much. She said her husband didn’t like it when she talked excessively so he “taught her another lesson.”
Another lesson. Probably not the first that he has administered to her during her marriage, one assumes after reading those lines.
Another lesson.
Noted British comics writer Alan Moore once wrote a haunting story for the Swamp Thing series about domestic abuse. He described a man who, piece by piece, demolished a woman he professed to love. He ripped apart her self-respect, he abused her body, he shattered her heart, he made her afraid. In the end, as Moore put it, “He had broken all the bones of her soul.”
I have nothing pithy, or wise to add at this point. I am just thinking of that woman offering up that horrendous line to the officers that night, afraid of things I can only guess at. And I think of the other women I’ve met in the same situation, or worse.
And I think of all the ones I haven’t met, but that I know are out there.
Lessons.
The lessons start early. Every time a child - boy or girl - sees a woman manhandled by a man, and no one steps forward to say that no one has a right to treat another human being like that, a lesson is learned.
Every time a child hears adults make excuses for abusive behavior in others, a lesson is driven home.
Every time they see that the adults around them don’t want to “interfere” in the family matters of others a lesson is delivered in large neon letters.
Lessons all taken to heart, even if never discussed openly around the family hearth.
And when it comes their turn to be abused? When all the bones of their soul are broken?
When questioned about her injuries, the victim told police that she drank too much and talked too much. She said her husband didn’t like it when she talked excessively so he “taught her another lesson.”
http://nwat.nwanews.com/news/2009/oct/23/man-accused-breaking-wifes-arm-20091023/
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Domestic Abuse Registry
I’m going to keep harping on this. We need a public registry of those who have been convicted of domestic abuse, so that one can check online and see if a potential spouse has ever been convicted.
All too often, these monsters move all too easily from relationship to relationship, their past a comfortable secret.
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Quote of the Day
Whenever we treat women’s bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them and their owners. - Germaine Greer, “The Female Eunuch”
