Domestic Jane Augustine Domestic Abuse Case Study

Domestic abuse is quite a peculiar concoction to swallow. At first, it tastes like a sweet ambrosia but as it settles the pleasant dream quickly spoils into a putrid rot, leaving the victim confused and longing for what once was. Love- it is the factor that makes these cases so perplexing. The threats, the isolation, the insults, and the pain comes from what strikes as an unlikely source; an abuser whom one is close to or loves. To define, domestic abuse is intentional intimidation, physical assault, sexual assault, or any other abusive behavior by one intimate partner to another to display power or control. Its components include physical, sexual, and psychological violence as well as emotional abuse. As an outsider looking at a case of domestic

Asserting power and control, Abusers usually have their victims under close surveillance. She feared that if she tried to reach out for help or voice her feelings, her husband would find out and the abuse will escalate. Even as she wrote, she had a constant paranoia that “he’d find it and that would set him off again” and if she hinted at the abuse that “he’d really blow up.” Writing on, Augustine delves into what it would she feared if she dared to drop the hint to her friends. Although her quiet desperation yearned to tell, the stigma of a wife talking badly about her own husband would classify her as a “complainer, a bitch.” The secret of abuse likewise seemed distasteful for image, not something anyone would want to be associated with. A part of her did want the story passing through people’s lips and spreading as hot gossip. Augustine also clung onto the diminishing hope that winds of change will blow over what was done. It could be a passing phase- “it could be just temporary…something that won’t last” she told herself. Maybe the person she married and loved will resurface and everything will be fine again if she waits long enough. With these thoughts, she stays and endures. Believability is an issue that prevents her from speaking up. Like a thin veneer, her husband’s true self is masked by a fine image. He has a respectable reputation as a professional who works hard at his

In the article, Augustine 's husband employs various types of control along with his physical abuse. In the realm of emotional abuse, he attacks her self-esteem and makes her feel guilty. He describes her as “manipulative, incompetent, secretive…” and “weak.” Her husband makes efforts to belittle her by attacking her character. Because of his status as a well-educated social worker who studied people’s mind, Augustine buys into his credibility and believes his hurtful words. According to him, she “counteract[s] the weakness with misplaced aggressiveness.” By saying this, he attributes that frustration and anger that she might feel from his abuse to her own downfalls. In his mind he is not the reason she is aggressive, her weakness is. Isolation, in conjunction with male privilege, plays a role in this abuse when he berates her for hiring a babysitter so she can shop for lining material. Because she is a woman, he places the expectation of her tending to the children solely on her and says that she “ought to be with them”. Her contact with the outside world is limited as she admonished for not staying home with the kids. In addition, he utilizes blaming when he says “ he was never like this before her married [her]” and that she “do[es] it to her [her]self.” The excuse is that something that she did drove him to respond in that