Violence Against Wives: A Case Against the Patriarchy

It is far more likely that a woman will be assaulted, raped, or killed by her husband than by a stranger. Yet a maltreated wife is left to struggle alone because of widespread beliefs that the sanctity and privacy of marriage must not be intruded upon, that the husband has certain "rights," or that the woman herself may be at fault. This book thoroughly documents the fact that violence in the home is systematically and disproportionately directed against women, and it demonstrates that wife-beating is a form of the husband's control and domination through a socially approved marital hierarchy. Unlike more narrow investigations of "domestic violence," it places the phenomenon of wife-beating firmly in its social and historical context. The authors make a case against patriarchy itself and against its co-porate in the helping professions, police, courtrooms, and hospitals. The authors give a grim but illuminating account of patriarchal beliefs and practices in Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and American traditions that have supported the right of a husband to dominate and chastise his wife. (As recently as 1853, a reform-minded legislator found it necessary to propose to the English House of Commons that married women should be treated no worse than domestic animals.) But the authors' main interest is in wife-beating as it now occurs. They analyze the forms and frequency of violence, the role of family, friends, and neighbors, and the alternatives--frequently the absence of alternatives--available to the beaten wife. Police, judges, psychiatrists, and social workers, even when sympathetic, are often unhelpful because of existing practices and professional philosophies. Whatever the failures of these official helpers, say the authors, the primary problem is that a certain idea of marriage itself and of the status of a wife makes a woman into an "appropriate victim" of assault. Violence Against Wives is action-oriented and proposes that the refuges established for battered wives in Britain, Europe, and North America serve as a model of constructive response to the problem. The Dobash formula for responsible action is to "unequivocally condemn the violence, reject the authority of husbands over their wives, and attempt to change the power relationships between them." Material for this study comes from a wealth of British, European, and American sources, which makes useful international comparisons possible. But the core of the work is in the numerous interviews of battered wives done by the authors during five years of research; the words of these women speaking for themselves provide the most moving parts of the book. Violence against wives is not only for specialists but for anyone concerned with putting an end to assumptions and behavior like those of one wife beater who told the police, "I can do what I like; she's my wife. About the Authors R. Emerson Dobash and Russell Dobash received their Ph.D.s from Washington State University and are now tenured faculty at the University of Stirling, Scotland. At present they are serving as consultants for the British Department of the Environment, and they have also acted as consultants for HEW and were involved in an SSRC French-Anglo exchange focusing on violence against women. Since 1974, they have worked closely with the National Women's Aid Federation (England and Wales) and the Scottish Women's Aid Federation. They have published numerous papers on domestic violence.