I Can Has Tech Support?
So my forum was hacked recently. This morning was spent fixing that, applying security fixes, and purging spam members from the database. Fun fun fun until someone takes my keyboard away. I have kind of neglected the forum of late, being occupied with the Chihuahua of Real Life making advances to my metaphysical leg. Bad Lili. No biscuit.
On the other hand, the hack was amateur and the fix simple, so that’s good. That’s the kind of problem I can solve.
I’m slowly catching up with the mountain of work that slammed into the bay during the recent unpleasantness. I think I’ve done a month’s worth of work in the past week alone. Plus I’ve been stuffing my head with books. In addition to all the new stuff I’ve gone back to comfort-food reads–Stephen King’s Rose Madder and Nancy Price’s Sleeping With the Enemy. Both are about abused wives who leave their husbands, but there the similarities end. Of the two, I think Price’s is the better book; but Rose Madder hits a few nerves with me that are both uncomfortable and cathartic. I seem to remember King saying in On Writing that he wrote it while Under The Influence, and there are certainly some stylistic messes in there. Still, there are moments of cold shivers that I keep going back for.
Sleeping With The Enemy is as different as it’s possible to be. The structure is much tighter and the book is much, much shorter. There is no paranormal element. The motif I like best is the “books can save your life” running through the whole thing. As a testament to the curative power of literature, it’s pretty matchless in my opinion.
The biggest quibble I have with BOTH books is that the abused wife goes straight from the abuser to a New Love. Which is SO NOT WHAT ONE SHOULD DO. That’s a good way to get into a new abusive relationship. I wonder why such different books share this hiccup. The treatment of domestic violence in a lot of fiction hinges on highlighting the New Love as gentle and sincere, a change from the Old Bad Love; maybe because the idea of a woman who doesn’t want anything to do with men after being beaten to a pulp by one might not move a story along in the traditional way. Or is it because a woman, in our culture, is still largely viewed as an adjunct to maleness and therefore must go from one relationship to another in order to be “defined” enough for the story’s purposes?
Why is this theme so prevalent in fiction about domestic violence? It’s damn near a trope; I seem to remember it in every movie that touches on the subject as well as most novels I’ve read dealing with it.
I am undecided whether this is a narrative crutch/copout or whether there’s a deeper gender bias issue here. I’m interested to hear your thoughts, dear Reader.
*throws golden apple*
*retreats to watch*
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