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Margareta HYDN

The World of the Fearful: Battered Womens

Narratives of Leaving Abusive Husbands

It is often suggested that battered women do not leave their abusive husbands because of
fear. In this article, it is argued that fear of the husband is not only something that
hampers women, but that it also could be regarded as a form of resistance on the part of
women. Fear does not necessarily include action, but contains an unarticulated knowledge
of what is wanted and what is unwanted. Based on interviews with 10 battered women at
the time of leaving their abusers, and two years on, the article analyzes the fear that con-
stituted a major part of the break-up process. Drawing on Foucaults conceptualization of
power, the accounts of fear were read as narratives of resistance to violence. Knowledge
about the different ways that a battered woman can express her resistance to violence
increases the prospects for researchers and professional and lay helpers to more ade-
quately address the complexity of the abuse of women.

INTRODUCTION

Why doesnt she leave? This is one of the most common questions raised about
battered women. The question implies dissociation from the violent event but
also an undertone of criticism of its victim: a woman who continues to live with
a man who batters her cannot be totally normal. The question is founded on the
incorrect assumption that a battered woman does in fact stay. She does not. Every
time he beats her she thinks, I dont want to experience this, I dont want to be
here. In her mind she leaves immediately. For some women, the break-up is
psychological the woman removes herself from the situation in her mind and
makes herself unreachable psychologically (Hydn, 1995a). For other women,
the violent situation ends with their physically leaving temporarily or forever
(Mullender, 1996).

Feminism & Psychology 1999 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 9(4): 449469.
[0959-3535(199911)9:4;449469;010340]

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450 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

This article deals with the women who do (physically) leave. The aim of the
article is to indirectly problematize the question of why some women do not leave
by analyzing one of the themes fear which constitutes a part of the break-up.
The origin of the article is a study whereby, during two years of interviewing, I
took part in battered womens prospective narratives about leaving violent
marriages, starting right after the break-up. The aim of the study was to describe
the psychological process of breaking up from an abusive husband and to find
answers to questions such as: in what way do the women account for the decision
to leave? What happened after they left? The study and its theoretical basis are
closely connected to my earlier work on battered women (Hydn, 1994, 1995a,
1995b; Hydn and McCarthy, 1994).
Aside from working as a researcher, I am also a psychotherapist. Over the
years my work has been devoted principally to psychotherapy with women
suffering from traumatic experiences of sexual abuse and/or marital violence. I
undertook my doctoral studies with a conviction that theoretical studies in social
science would bring knowledge and insights to battered womens problems, and
that my acquiring of methodological skills would enable me to undertake my own
studies. The techniques and methods of psychotherapy are developed in order to
focus the inner life and inner development of the individual or the family. I
wished to expand this perspective and in a more all-embracing way study the
psychological process my patients undertook, the experiences they shared and the
themes and issues that were central in their lives. The common efforts of patient
and therapist, in order for the patient to achieve a higher degree of self-
understanding, are part of what I appreciate most in therapeutic work. In psycho-
therapy with battered women this self-understanding does not reach its full
meaning until it can be transformed into thoughts and actions that help the
woman to gain control over her own life. One of my foremost aims in my
research work is to gain knowledge that can be used for such purposes.
In studying battered womens break-ups, I have worked both theoretically and
empirically in an area that has hardly been touched on before. The dramaturgy
and rhetoric of the break-ups social-psychological process had not previously
captured the interest of researchers of battered women. There have been studies
done in closely associated areas, such as battered womens repeated attempts to
end the violence by reasoning with the husband and making him understand that
he must cease the abuse, by retreating or by seeking the protection and advice of
relatives and friends (Bowker, 1993; Kelly, 1988; Mullender, 1996; Pahl, 1985).
I have learned in my psychotherapeutic work that resistance and break-up are
closely associated with one another. With only a few exceptions (Kelly, 1988;
Wade, 1997), the resistance theme has been almost completely missing from
research on the abuse of women. Subjects such as the function, consequences
and psychological damage of violence have, however, attracted the interest of
feminist-oriented researchers (Eliasson, 1997; Herman, 1992; Lundgren, 1993;
Miller, 1994; Waites, 1993; Walker, 1984, 1994), and criminologists have
studied questions such as the spread of violence and the reasons for it (Gelles,

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 451

1979; Straus and Gelles, 1990). By studying the break-ups of battered women, I
want to contribute by adding the theme of resistance to the agenda. Studying
battered womens break-ups involves studying how the woman fractures the
mans sphere of power. It involves study of those cases in which the man wields
power over the woman by the use of violence, but has failed to maintain his
power because the woman left him.
There are three parts to the article. In the first part I describe the study of
battered womens break-ups, from which the material is derived. Thereafter
follows the main section of the article, which describes the womens accounts of
fear. The conclusion is a discussion of the significance of women getting the
chance to voice their fears in order to get protection and to deal with the fears,
and the difficulties which meet a presumptive listener/respondent.

THE STUDY

Ten women who sought refuge at a shelter for battered women in Stockholm,
Sweden, after having left an abusive husband, were interviewed on six separate
occasions over a two-year period. All the women had been subjected to repeated
and serious violence in their marriages. Serious violence is defined as violent
actions (for example, kicks, punches, threats with a weapon, attempt to strangle,
rape and so on). Repeated violence means violence that is so frequent that it
has become an integral part of marital life. Women in the group were subjected
to the shelters entry criteria and conditions. For example, women with substance
misuse problems were not admitted.
In the year during which my informants lived in the womens shelter, about 40
women stayed there. The length of their stays varied greatly, from a week or so
up to one year. Two categories of women could be identified by their national
origins. Between 20 percent and 30 percent of the women were of Swedish (or
other Nordic) origin. The divisions did not change significantly over the years.
Socially, this was a comparatively homogeneous group of women from the work-
ing class and the lower middle class. Most of the women did not have strong
economic or professional positions, which influenced their break-ups and their
opportunities for independent lives. The second category was women with a non-
Nordic national origin (7080 percent).1 For linguistic and cultural reasons I
sought my informants in the group of Swedish and Nordic women. I felt that I
would have the best chance of communicating with, and getting the most
comparable material from, this reasonably homogeneous group of women (see
Table 1).
Of my 10 informants, 6 were employed in the public sector; of these, 5 had
lower positions in the area of health and medical care. One of the women was
more educated and worked in private industry; one woman was a student; one
was a housewife; and one was unemployed. The ages of the women varied from
21 to 45 years. Eight of the women were dependent on social welfare for short

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452 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

periods so that they could pay for moving expenses, or to compensate for low sick
pay or a lack of unemployment insurance. Altogether, the women had a total of
16 children at home and 2 grown children. Six of the abusive husbands were of
foreign origin.

TABLE 1
Names of informants (changed to protect their privacy), ages and numbers of children

Anja, 45 Two children (abuser not the father) Fredrika, 21 No children

Bea, 23 Two children (abuser is father of Gun, 27 No children
one of them)
Carolina, 43 Three children Helen, 28 Four children
Danielle, 26 Two children (abuser is father of Isa, 33 Two children
one of them)
Eva, 34 One child (abuser not the father) Jannike, 36 Two children
(abuser is father
of one of them)

The Interview
Each interview lasted approximately one hour and was taped, then subsequently
transcribed. Altogether, this led to a text of about 860 pages. I made my analysis
on the Swedish text. A native English speaker has then translated the excerpts
used in this article into English.
The first interview took place at the womens shelter one or two weeks after
arrival, and subsequent interviews were conducted in the womens homes at
about four-month intervals. Prior to the first interview, I prepared only two
questions: Why do you leave the marriage at this point? and What is your life
like right now; what is most central in your life right now? The second question
was repeated in each of the later interviews, in which I asked: How has your
present life been affected by what you have gone through? and What do you
think about those violent events now?
To encourage free narratives, I chose an open interview style with few
questions formulated in detail. In my form of interviewing, the questions are
primarily aimed at constructing a framework and a relationship within which my
informant could feel free and have the opportunity to discuss her thoughts and
feelings. It is her associations, her inner logic and understanding (or possibly her
lack of inner logic and understanding) of what had happened that I wanted to
access. I have striven to develop a form for interviewing that is built on the
assumption that the research interview can be understood as a relational practice
that places at the informants disposal a framework for developing his/her under-
standing. Such an interview form gives the researcher the opportunity to gain
richer material than the traditional in-depth interview.
I refrained from trying to formulate the womens dilemmas as psychiatric
diagnoses. I wanted to avoid attributing the social conditions under which the

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 453

woman lived and the psychological processes they were undergoing in the break-
ups to specific qualities in the women themselves. A quality is something that is
an attribute of the person herself; it is something that is lasting and not limited
in time and space. A process is not a quality, but rather a condition, which is
characterized by changeability.2

THE WOMENS FEARS IN A TWO-YEAR PERSPECTIVE

Prior to the Break-up

My opening question Why do you leave the marriage at this point? was
generally met by a short silence and That is a good question, followed by I
really dont know. The women gave me no clear accounts of their decisions to
leave. However, as the interviews proceeded, I got very dramatic accounts of
inner dialogues that took place prior to leaving. Fear was not accounted for as an
issue in these dialogues. The contents were rather about considering whether to
live or to die. The spectre of Death had entered the marital scene and the dialogue
was between him and the woman. She connected her husband to Death as the
collaborator and assumed that he wanted to kill her. This understanding came
to her all of a sudden, sometimes reflecting an actual change in the mans
behaviour, sometimes not. Her voice in the dialogue was the resisting one. Her
decision was not about leaving, but about living.
Prior to this decision there was a period when the women endured by with-
drawing. Outwardly, they tried to be as passive as possible in order to avoid con-
flict, but their inner activity was considerable.

After the Break-up

Undifferentiated and differentiated fear. My second question in the initial inter-
view, What is your life like right now?, got very prompt answers. All of the
women discussed fear as an emotion that dominated their lives completely. Five
of the women brought it up spontaneously, even though the subject had not
specifically been addressed in the interview. Five of the women discussed their
fear more as a result of our conversations. In these cases it was sometimes I who
introduced the theme (What you describe sounds like several different examples
of fear. Is that so?), or the woman herself (What Im talking about here, I notice,
is how scared I am). In a first analysis of the womens narratives, I focused my
work on the basic characteristics of the descriptions of fear. I found the content
of the descriptions quite comprehensive, and various aspects of fear were touched
on. I have chosen to present three of these aspects, primarily because they
recurred frequently in the womens interpretation of their fear. I also chose them
because I consider them to be central, both in setting up a course of treatment and
for the planning of the efforts of police and social services. These three aspects
are:

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454 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

Object of fear
Could vary between:
A general feeling of fear not associated with any object outside the woman
herself
The woman feels both general fear and fear of the husband
The woman is afraid of her husband.
The womans capacity for action in relationship to the fear
Could vary between:
None, aside from staying hidden
Reactive; if she is threatened by the husband she can seek shelter
Self-initiating; she can take the initiative in order to reduce her fear.
Extent of fear
Could vary between:
Overwhelming, completely dominating
Not overwhelming, but plays a major role in the womans life
Background emotion.
The women continued to discuss fear in subsequent interviews. When I
analyzed the womens descriptions of their fear, I found that they changed their
stories over time in a very characteristic way. During the first interview the fear
was not directed at any specific object. Six of the women described a general,
impersonal feeling of fear, and four described both a general fear as well as a fear
of their husbands. Their fears dominated the entire lives of seven of the women.
Eight of the women described themselves as being without capacity for action to
deal with this kind of fear, except by keeping themselves hidden. Two of the
women told of well thought-out systems of how they would be able to protect
themselves if they were to meet their husbands on the street. Most of the women
described the extent of fear in this first interview as though they were over-
whelmed by it; it was an emotion that completely dominated their lives (see
Table 2).
In a second analysis of the womens narratives, I focused my work on an
investigation of the different aspects of fear and on the relationships between
these aspects. I found that they had a characteristic relationship to each other, and
was able to identify two basic kinds of fear, undifferentiated and differentiated. I
have several reasons for emphasizing these. First, the emphasis demonstrates
something of the difficulties and emotional stresses involved in a break-up; it can
put the question of Why doesnt she leave him? into perspective. Second, fear
seems to be an unavoidable part of the break-up. And third, fear seems to be a
complex emotion that changes character with time, which means that the same
woman can experience fear in several different ways in the process of breaking
up.

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 455

TABLE 2
Changes in the descriptions of fear over a period of time. Number of informants who on
some occasion named fear as a subject (N=10)

Interview Mentions fear Mentions Aspects of fear

fear spon-
taneously
Object of fear Womans Extent
capacity of fear
for action

a b c d e f g h i
1 10 5 6 4 0 8 2 0 7 3 0
2 7 3 1 2 4 2 2 3 1 6 0
3 5 3 0 1 4 0 2 3 0 5 0
4 5 3 0 2 3 0 2 3 0 2 3
5 5 2 0 2 3 0 2 3 0 2 3
6 5 1 0 2 3 0 3 2 0 2 3

Object of fear:
a=A general feeling of fear not associated with any object outside the woman herself
b=The woman feels both general fear and fear of the husband
c=The woman is afraid of her husband
The womans capacity for action:
d=None, aside from staying hidden
e=Reactive; if she is threatened by the husband she can seek shelter
f=Self-initiating; she can take the initiative in order to reduce her fear
Extent of fear:
g=Overwhelming, completely dominating
h=Not overwhelming, but plays a major role in the womans life
i=Background emotion

Two Weeks to Four Months after the Break-up

Undifferentiated fear completely overwhelms the woman as a general feeling,
and is seen as being impossible to deal with. The first of these two basic kinds of
fear I have chosen to call undifferentiated fear. This is a general fear which is not
connected with any object or situation outside the woman herself. The woman is
completely overwhelmed by her fear and sees no opportunity to influence it.
Variations of this type of fear can include her belief in a certain capacity for
action, or that the fear does not completely occupy her. This kind of fear consti-
tuted a dominant theme in the first interview.
In the following excerpt we meet Eva, a 34-year-old woman, in her first inter-
view. I have asked her: Whats going on? Whats central in your life right now?
Eva answers:

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456 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

If I start out with when I first came here, what I was mostly thinking about, and
the worst of it was that I was so frightened. It didnt matter how many locked
doors there were, I couldnt even feel protected here, so I was really afraid. . . .
Its like I just sat on a chair, and I remember I was thinking somebodys got
to come and help me now, because here I am completely paralyzed . . . com-
pletely unable to change my life . . . alone.

In Evas description of her fear, the repeated themes were solitude, immova-
bility and helplessness. These themes were often combined with each other; that
is, solitude and helplessness, immovability and helplessness. These themes were
related to her efforts to change her life; they were also expressed in terms of
lack, things that she misses, for example, the lack of other people, the lack of
movability, the lack of the opportunity to control. Together, they constitute an
obstacle to a good life.
Carolina gave a similar description of fear in her first interview. At the time,
she found herself in a very difficult situation. Her husband had found out where
she was through an acquaintance, and had threatened her. She was suffering from
a number of physical problems serious throat infections and stomach pains.
She said that she was terribly frightened. When I asked her to describe this feel-
ing, she stated that this was quite impossible, but proceeded to tell me about a
dream:

I have had the same dream for three nights now. It is the one with the pack of
dogs that tear me apart and I can see it and I wake up with this. I can still feel
the pain from when they tried to tear me into pieces. And then these wolves in
another dream tear me to pieces and I intend to go away and I cannot do any-
thing. I know that wolves work as a team to bring down their victim. I think this
has something to do with Adam [her former husband]; at the same time as I am
trying to hide I have these people around me not helping me but helping him
instead.

Solitude (the others are in the flock, while she is alone and excluded) is a theme
of Carolinas narrative as in Evas, as is the immovability (she intends to move,
but cant get away) and the helplessness (the wolves bite her, but she can do
nothing). The decisive difference is that Carolinas narrative tells of how a pack
of animals hunt her to kill her.
The last example of a description of the type of fear I have chosen to call
undifferentiated is an excerpt from Helens first interview. It is about a general
feeling of fear which is, however, not quite as comprehensive as the excerpts
from Eva and Carolina expressed. We are approaching the end of the interview.
Helen has told me how frightened she has been, and how upset she gets when she
thinks about it. She is very emotional when she says:

And at the same time as you try to do something about it, the fear kind of takes
over. I can look back and see how scared I was all the time, and how the fear
kept growing. Thats the biggest emotion I have, this fear, and you cant touch
it or see it. Its just there all the time, and its tough.

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 457

What Helen expressed in the process of describing her fear was that she is
re-evaluating her former life to some extent. As she looked back at her life she
found that she has always been afraid, and that her fear has increased.

Five to Ten Months after the Break-up

Differentiated fear is connected with the husband, is not completely overwhelm-
ing and is valued as possible to do something about. The second basic type of fear
I have chosen to call differentiated fear. It is primarily connected with one and
the same object, the husband. The women began to speak of this type of fear in
the second interview. This fear changed over time in such a way that the women
described an increasing capacity for action and reduced consequences on their
lives in general. Comparisons of the descriptions of fear in the third and sixth
interviews made this pattern apparent.
When the fear changes character and is related to the husband, other aspects
are also changed. The fear does not seem to be quite as dominating, and the
capacity for action is increased. In most of the descriptions of differentiated fear
which my informants gave me, the husband was the main object of fear. These
descriptions were set up in such a way that they did not primarily allow a
presentation of the narrators condition, but rather that of the person on whom the
fears were based, that is, the violent man. The following excerpt is from
Carolinas third interview, and can be compared with the quote from her first
interview:

Im still afraid of him. Like when I started on my new job, we changed our
clothes in the cellar. But I could only stand to change two or three times, and
then I couldnt be down there any more. I panicked; I had a real panic attack one
night when I worked late. I thought I was going to pass out. I was thinking,
What if I meet him down here? Where am I going to run to? Then I went to
talk to my boss. She knows whats happened to me, so she said, This wont
work, you should be able to change somewhere else. Ill find a room for you.
So it feels safe at work too, knowing that someone else knows.

The woman herself takes a double role in these narratives. She is both the
object of her terrible fear and, simultaneously, describes herself as being very
active in her attempts to fend off the danger. Whatever she does, though, she can
never feel secure, and describes her opportunities to affect the situation as being
very limited. A strong feeling of solitude is heard in the womens narratives. This
impression is based on the womans taking the acting subjects role as well as the
role of the frightened person whom the acting subject is trying to save and pro-
tect. In a few cases people who can help the woman appeared in the narratives,
but the overall pattern is one of solitude.
Some of the womens narratives differed from those of the majority, however,
in one important aspect: they were more self-scrutinizing, and contained more
thoughts about the individual and her actions during the time she was in the

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458 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

relationship with the abusive husband. In this type of description, the women
claimed that they became afraid for themselves, when they looked back. The
following is an excerpt from Fredrikas fourth interview:

How could I have been so blind? Sometimes I feel almost afraid for myself. How
could he make me do that, how could I be so stupid? How could he manage to
do all that, how could I permit it? How did I get into that pattern? I fought it in
the beginning, but since I had such strong feelings about him, and felt that I had
a goal . . . I gave in.

The woman also seems quite alone in this type of description. In the last set of
interviews other people appear in some of the womens statements. Those women
who can break the pattern of solitude are also able to increase their capacities for
action. There is one important condition that the people with whom they make
contact for shorter or longer periods can support their active efforts.

After Two Years

Fear as a background emotion. The changes in the womens descriptions of
their fear, which took place between the first and second interviews, were con-
solidated during later interviews. The women spoke of fear as an emotion that
was still present to a great degree, but they referred to it in a somewhat different
way than they had in the first interview. The incapacity to act had disappeared,
and they felt that they had the opportunity to act to make themselves feel safer.
The extent of the fear was no longer such that it completely dominated their lives
as it had formerly done. It was no longer a question of overwhelming fear, but
rather of a background emotion which sometimes became activated.
Bea, the next-to-youngest of my informants, told me about such a develop-
ment. She had a young son who was fathered by the man who abused her. He
wanted to see the son often, and Beas fears were activated when these meetings
took place. In the final interview Bea stated that she was able to manage her fear
somewhat, and that her primary supporters were the police. She had received
good advice and support, as well as different kinds of protection from them.
During one period she carried an alarm kit; on other occasions police cars had
been directed to drive past Beas house on their way to the police station when
the husband was expected there. As the police said, That usually calms things
down a little. Bea stated that it worked well, and that the mere knowledge that
she was in close contact with the police did calm the husband.
In her final interview, Fredrika told me that she was still afraid of her former
boyfriend, of his unpredictability and of the fact that she had no control of where
he was, or whether he was going to take revenge. She had sought contact with
other women to get support, and she had a new and very friendly boyfriend. She
still avoided places where she might run into her former boyfriend. As the years
passed, her fear faded away.

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 459

Fear as a permanent companion. There was only one woman, Carolina, who
in the sixth interview immediately brought up the subject of fear as something
that marked her life. Her husband had continued to follow her around, and she
had had to move a couple of times. Two of her sons lived with their father, and
she could only meet them sporadically. The husband had communicated his view
through the sons that a mothers place is in the home. She had sought and
obtained a restraint on visitation but when the restraint was to be reviewed her
address was given to the husband. She got an unlisted telephone number which
was revealed when her telephone bill was erroneously sent to the husband.
Two other women, Eva and Isa, spoke of a feeling of general fear which was
activated when they thought of their husbands. Two years had gone by and
neither husband had been heard from. Isa had two children who were fathered by
her former husband. He had returned to his native country and kept in touch with
the children by mail. Even though neither Eva nor Isa had been threatened after
they left their husbands, they lived with fear that did not wholly dominate their
lives but was nevertheless always present. Both had considered this, and stated
that the feeling of fear had always been present, and was reinforced by the
husbands violent abuse. The following quotation comes from Isas sixth inter-
view. Toward the end of the interview, after Isa had brought up the subject of
fear, I posed the following question:

MH: This fear, is it something that has been an issue earlier in your life, or is
it something new?
Isa: No, its nothing new, no. I see the world around me as frightening any-
way, but this is so obviously what Im afraid of here. Otherwise its
more, well, it can be things like Im trying to get on a safe platform, live
in a place where theres not a lot of trouble. I guess I think that if its not
dangerous, at least its a little less frightening somehow. Theres a
pretty clear connection here . . . it comes from when I was growing up,
it was . . . you had to listen all the time for the tension. And my father
had a terrible temper that you always had to keep checking for.

In Isas case her position was complicated further by the fact that she admired
her father greatly, and felt that she was like him. She identified herself with
his intellectual interests, his ability to analyze logically and his ordered and con-
trolling sides. She valued that in herself, even though she had always been afraid
of him; he meant a great deal to her.

Break-up as an Act of Resistance

The most significant thing that I learned in my investigation was the fact that an
abused womans break-up is a process which is extended over at least a year, and
sometimes longer. Winning her freedom costs her suffering and struggling, while
the freedom is something she has never completely lost. This condition is basic,
and gives the woman motivation.

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460 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

These insights have made me sceptical about theories of power struggles

between people claiming that the power relationships between people can be
described in terms of a binary structure in which the dominating are on one side
and the dominated on the other. Power is better described as something that is
omnipresent, and that can assume several different guises. One researcher who
has developed a power theory like this is Michel Foucault. In an interview
published under the title Power and Strategies (1980), he presents a discussion
of power and resistance, which he claims are closely intertwined:

There are no relations of power without resistances; the latter are all the more
real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of
power are exercised; resistance to power does not have to come from elsewhere
to be real, nor is it inexorably frustrated through being the compatriot of power.
It exists all the more by being in the same place as power; hence, like power,
resistance is multiple and can be integrated in global strategies (Foucault, 1980:
142).

Foucaults analysis of power relationships between people inspired me to

examine my interview material for how, when, where and in what way the resis-
tance of battered women can be expressed in the descriptions they gave me of the
progress of the break-up. Can it be true, I asked myself, that womens resistance
against the violence to which they were subjected is so ubiquitous that it is diffi-
cult to identify in the womans environment, and for the woman herself? One
researcher who would most probably give an affirmative answer to this question
is James C. Scott (1990). He claims that resistance is always present in dominated
people like slaves and bondsmen, but that they seldom dare to show their resis-
tance openly. Thus they may be presumed to accept the dominance of their
superiors. Beneath the surface, however, the dominated people create their own
space in which the resistance is expressed in a hidden transcript, which can be
represented in a more or less specific way.
When the woman leaves her husband, however, the resistance is expressed
clearly and openly. There is no longer any question of a hidden transcript. She
has fractured his sphere of dominance, and this is demonstrated publicly. The
violence no longer exists as a part of the relationship, nor is it still entirely an
issue between two private people. In the long run, this revelation can become an
issue between the husband and the state, in the form of the public prosecutor and
the judiciary. In an analysis of the power relationship between man and woman
solely in terms of dominance and subjugation, her action has a tendency to be
seen as a defeat, as a sign of surrender and the husbands ultimate victory. The
womans resistance and actions are hardly noticed at all in this kind of interpre-
tation. Throughout this article I have argued that the womans breaking up should
be interpreted as just that as an act of resistance.
Seeing a break-up as an act of resistance does, however, have its limitations.
The woman does something over which she has no control of the consequences.
She does not know whether her efforts will be rewarded with success, or whether

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 461

the husband will continue to pursue and abuse her. The basic reasons for the
womans fear stem from this insecurity.
In the case of my informants it seems that their efforts were rewarded with
success in the sense that they were not subjected to further violence with the
exceptions of Carolina, who was subjected to serious threats, and Gun and
Danielle, who pursued their husbands and were abused. After two years the
threats against Danielle still existed. Helen had been reunited with her husband.
The other women met their husbands very sporadically or not at all (see Table 3).

TABLE 3
The womens contact with their husbands after the break-up

Anja Met husband during trial. He was incarcerated. They never see each other.
Bea Met husband during trial. He was given a short prison sentence. They met in
connection with regular visitation of the child.
Carolina Threat. The husband came looking for her. She met him in connection with
the trial. He was given a short prison sentence and appealed against it.
Danielle After breaking up a second time, she met him in connection with the trial. He
was given a probational sentence. She met him sporadically after that, in
connection with visitation of the child.
Eva Met husband during trial. He was incarcerated. They never see each other.
Fredrika Never sees him.
Gun Never sees him.
Helen Reunited.
Isa Never sees him. He probably returned to his native country.
Jannike Never sees him. He probably returned to his native country.

Changing a Relationship by Breaking Up

A woman can, thus, succeed in her efforts to avoid the husbands violence by
breaking up, but not be successful in making him change his behaviour so that
their relationship can continue. The resistance of breaking up expresses, there-
fore, both the power she has and her powerlessness. Helen was the only one of
my informants who broke this pattern. When she left her husband she reported
him to the police, and he was arrested. While he was incarcerated he began to
re-evaluate crucial aspects of his life. He was never charged. He continued to
question himself and his actions. He had grown up with violence and unfair treat-
ment, and had simply continued in that pattern. Now he wanted to end all this,
reunite with Helen and the children, and start life anew. He sought help, and drew
up a barrier against his earlier life and his parents and succeeded. All of this
occurred outside Helens chance to influence or control. Her actions had, how-
ever, led to his making decisions about his life. These decisions later made a great
difference to the couples life together. He and Helen were reunited and had
another child together. The abuse was never repeated during the time I followed
up the family (almost four years).
An important characteristic of marital life is its profound link with the parties

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462 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

individual life histories (Hydn, 1994). To end a violent relationship means to

end a personal involvement. When the battered woman leaves her husband, she
breaks the sphere of power that kept her in the relationship. At the same time,
however, she breaks the sphere of solidarity that is also a characteristic of the
marriage. I note that power and solidarity are in a paradoxical relation to each
other in violent marriages. The mans power over the woman is evident, but
if it was the only ingredient in a violent marriage, if the man was never that
repressive, if he never said anything but no, he could not compel the woman to
obey him, year after year. Power governs asymmetrical relationships where one
person is subordinated to the other; solidarity governs symmetrical relationships
characterized by social equality and similarity. The departing woman leaves both
relationships. Her wish to leave the violence may be as strong as her hesitation to
leave that which has been strong and positive in her life with the man. To resist
violence by separation could be costly for the woman since it may elicit anger in
the man, but also because she may lose something, which has been, or could have
been, positive.

Fear as Resistance
The closest readings to the womens descriptions of fear are to read them as
narratives about pain, which says something about the price of breaking up.
Alternatively, they can be read as narratives that have something to say about
womens desire and ability to resist. This reading is not completely self-evident.
We usually associate resistance with action. When we read the womens state-
ments as narratives that say something about womens resistance, then fear is an
expression of resistance not in that it includes action, but rather in that it consti-
tutes a power which makes the woman notice that what may happen is something
she doesnt want to see happen. The fear contains an unarticulated knowledge of
what she wants and doesnt want. She wants to avoid the undesirable and to attain
its opposite. She doesnt want her abusers lack of respect or his way of forcing
himself on her and attacking her body. She doesnt want his diminution of her
until she feels so little that she feels like an empty shell that can be invaded by
anyone, where any thoughts and feelings at all can be deposited. The fear
includes this type of unarticulated knowledge, which may be noticed in a con-
versation with the woman.
Fear, helplessness and resistance are closely associated with each other. I
believe that this close relation can be described thus: fear is the resistance offered
by those who are presumed to be powerless. The fact that the woman is
frightened means that she is opposed to violence, without necessarily having any
well-prepared strategy of how she can avoid being re-exposed. If the woman
receives help in articulating her fear, and is not influenced only by her own
powerlessness but can also confront her will to resist, then it is possible for her to
move on and act in accordance with this that is, to offer more active resistance.
To be frightened when one is subjected to violence is a reaction that is more or

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 463

less automatic. The abuser knows this. Fear is something he likes to evoke,
because it is easy to assume a dominant position over a frightened person with
little contact with her inner resistance. However, a frightened person in contact
with her inner resistance is not so easy to dominate. A person like that has the
possibility of acting to her own advantage.
When fear is protection. It was not fear of the husband that was the deciding
factor when the women in my study broke away. At some distance from the
violent marriage, this is something that surprises and sometimes frightens the
women. They think that it was only reasonable that they felt afraid and acted in
accordance with that feeling. We meet Eva again:

I dont remember being as afraid when we were together as I feel now that were
apart, except maybe for short periods. Perhaps I should have been.

My conclusion is that when the woman offered resistance to the violence in the
form of a break-up, her picture of the husband changed. This, in turn, led to her
seeing what she had been subjected to in a different way. The husband is now a
danger to her; she may have felt this earlier, but not at all in such a compulsive
way as now. Shortly after the break-up, the change in her way of seeing the
husband is expressed in an undifferentiated fear. Differentiated fear with the
husband as the object of the fear, which she feels at a later stage, can contain
everything from an image of him as omnipotent and omnipresent to a more
manageable feeling that his dangerousness is something that can be handled.
Both of these forms of fear lead to the woman protecting herself from the
husband. The fear thus also has a positive meaning in her life. This is worth
noting, especially since its negative influence is so obvious.
When no fear gives protection. In the second interview I found that three of
the women who spoke of their fears at the first meeting did not do so at the
second. They neither broached the subject spontaneously, nor did they bring it up
in the course of the conversation. It turned out later that these women were diffi-
cult to reach to make appointments for their third interviews. They had moved
without forwarding their telephone calls. I had to seek them through other women
to reestablish contact. It turned out that they had been in contact with their
husbands. They had actively avoided me, since they thought it was embarrassing
to admit that they had contacted the men. They were supposed to be taking part
in a project about break-ups!
During the third interview they gave different reasons for why they had seen
their husbands. Two women, Danielle and Helen, had been present when the
husband was there to meet the children, in order to supervise the meeting and pro-
tect the children. The meetings had been positive, and had awakened hopes that
possibly they could continue their lives together. Both women had, however,
been seriously abused again.
The third woman, Gun, went to the husbands home with the intention of
making an agreement, to once and for all end the relationship. She had tried to

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464 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

end it several times earlier, but had always gone back to him because she
didnt want to separate without a proper conclusion. She sought some form
of reinforcement from the husbands side. It didnt necessarily need to be an
apology, but rather a confirmation that they had both experienced the same thing,
and that he was sorry that she had had to suffer so much. Over the years he had
been completely unsympathetic, which Gun had felt was belittling and degrading.
It did not work out as she had hoped, either. Here is a section five minutes into
her third interview:

Gun: I went there twice, and then he came in.

MH: Did you leave then or stay for a while?
Gun: No, not a while, Id been there for a few hours when I saw him there. I
got mad and I felt that this was my home, and there sits that idiot.
MH: Did you begin to scold him or . . .?
Gun: Yes. Ive got so much anger; theres so much I want to say. Its like a
treadmill. I say things like You damned dope addict. I know Im really
mean, and Im probably pretty provoking in a way, but what Im thinking
is, I have the right to say this!

It is probable that the husband did not share her viewpoint on what she had a
right to say. Gun got a different confirmation from the one she was so anxiously
seeking. When she was alone with him she had difficulty protecting herself. He
abused her badly. In the third interview Gun told about her strong fear of the
husband. When she went to see him her fear was overpowered by her anger and
by the thought of getting him to act as she wished. Now she had completely
changed her mind. She could still get angry when she thought of him, but
mostly she was afraid. She realized that she had hardly any chance of influencing
him, and she did not believe in the possibility of a change. He was a severely dis-
turbed psychopath, she said, a drug abuser who was completely out of control,
and a victim of a twisted libido. She resolved never to contact him again, and
finally managed to end the relationship mentally without his reinforcement.

ENTERING THE WORLD OF THE FEARFUL

Implications for Feminist and Psychological Practice

Why doesnt she leave? I criticized this question in my introduction, because it
is based on the erroneous supposition that a battered woman really does stay. In
conclusion, I can add that it is based on yet another erroneous supposition, which
assumes that the break-up consists of one single event. It does not. It consists of
a process, which extends over several years, one which involves risks to the
woman. The most obvious risk is associated with the womans limited resources
of controlling what happens during the process of breaking up. She has offered
resistance and fractured the husbands sphere of power without having control of
the consequences that the break-up can bring about. She has failed in what she

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HYDN: The World of the Fearful 465

may have wished most to get the husband to change his behaviour. This lack of
the opportunity to influence and control constitutes one of the basic reasons for
the womans fear during the entire break-up.
Fear constitutes both a positive and a negative power during the process of
breaking up. It acts negatively because it is painful, requires energy and involves
risks to the woman. Undifferentiated fear means a greater risk because it seems
to be expressed physically to a great extent. If the woman is not able to express
it in words or actions, it can encapsulate itself, with psychosomatic symptoms as
a result. Fear of the husband can also occupy so much of the womans strength
for so long a time that her opportunities of going on with her life are seriously
limited.
On the other hand, fear constitutes a positive power for action because it bears
a message to the woman that danger threatens, and that what might happen is
something she does not want to have happen. It is not certain that the woman can
identify this message and properly evaluate it. She may need to have it explained.
The womans fear communicates a strong message. It is a signal to the world
around that contact is desired, and a response must be forthcoming in order for
development to continue being positive.
In making an extended study of abused womens narratives about breaking up,
and finding fear to be such a central theme, it becomes evident that the woman
must be able to deal with her fear in order to be able to go on with her life. It is
equally evident that this is not something she can do on her own. She needs
concrete assistance and different forms of protection. This protection should be
designed so that it limits her freedom as little as possible, but does limit his
freedom. Most of the measures of protection available today for example, pro-
tected living in a womens shelter, alarm kit, new identity and unlisted address
limit her freedom, not his. I believe that changes should be made in societys
measures to limit his freedom, for the purpose of getting him to leave the woman
alone. However, it would be extending the boundaries of this article too far if I
were to discuss how these measures could be designed.
What does fall within the framework of the article, though, is another aspect of
the fact that the woman needs help in dealing with her fear she needs to com-
municate it. In order to make her fear manageable, she must find a listener/
respondent with whom she can formulate her experiences. It is not necessarily
clear or easy to find a listener, because her fear is unique in many ways; it is not
shared by many others and is therefore difficult to explain. I would like to con-
clude this article with an analysis of the fear inherent to the break-up, bringing
out some themes that can be valuable to those whose job involves listening to
fearful abused women who have left their husbands.
To not recognize oneself. Generally, it is difficult for the fearful to find a
listener/respondent, since the kind of fear she experiences is unknown to most
people. Fear itself is well known to each of us. Everyone is afraid many times in
his/her life. A fearful woman thus shares this experience with others, meaning
that her experiences are not unfamiliar or incomprehensible. Those around

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466 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

her are able to recognize this fear. The experience of fear as a shared human
experience, however, is related to temporary, acute fear that is associated with a
special and time-limited event (when that big dog started growling and showing
his teeth, I was really scared). With regard to long-lasting, almost chronic, fear,
the circumstances are different. This type of experience is not an experience that
is shared by most people. Situations which lead to people living in a state of
chronic fear include living in a war zone or under threats and violence for months
or years. These defining features of chronic fear cause difficulties for the
chronically afraid person. They make it hard for her to communicate her feelings
to others. A chasm grows between her reality and that of others. The others have
not experienced the danger-filled situation or met the person she is afraid of. How
can they know what the situation really is? How can they know whether hes
really as dangerous as she thinks? Perhaps when they met him, he was as nice as
anyone could be. How can others know whether she is exaggerating or not, when
they have not seen it with their own eyes? Or imagined that he is even more
dangerous than she thinks? There is only one person who has been present with
the woman during the battering situation, only one person who knows what it has
been like the man who has been beating her. My informants related how
they had insistently sought verification from their husbands of what they had
experienced or felt during the course of their marriage.
The language of fear. When women describe undifferentiated fear in their first
interview, several images reappear. It is the same kind of condition that is
described the immovable and unprotected. It is the girl who sits on a chair,
unprotected, paralyzed and incapable of moving. It is the girl who is torn to
shreds by hunting wolves. In these cases the fear defies words and expresses
itself instead in muteness and paralysis. This physical expression can have a
communicable meaning: protect me, make my life better! But this wish is not
easy for the world to interpret.
Each time the womans fear is lifted out of its physical expression and
verbalized there is also a risk that it will be re-encapsulated. The attempt to
convey the feeling can fail, so that further attempts seem to be fruitless. Since the
verbal signs are so unstable, the listener cannot simply adopt a passive role, but
must ask actively. As if this were not difficult enough, the fragile verbalization
can be used for a special purpose; the woman who is frightened can avoid speak-
ing about it in order to hide her fear from herself. If this is her primary strategy,
her silence can make a transition from being a time-limited condition to some-
thing that is seen by those around her as a part of her character. It is not the fear
itself that does this, but rather the way in which the woman handles her fear.
There is an example of this in Guns first interview, where she describes how she
freezes everything. She states that she has become an expert at freezing situa-
tions and putting herself into a condition of total apathy as she avoids all
thoughts and feelings. This has had the negative result that the world around her
has no comprehension of the suffering she has endured she seems so cool and
seems to have everything under control.

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In order to go on with her life, it is necessary for the woman to place herself in
the narrative and assign herself the position of subject. In order to help her in this
process, it is important to meet her both in her feelings of solitude and resigna-
tion and in her capacity for action. When she met the man who would later abuse
her, she was on her way somewhere, and came from somewhere. She needs help
in recalling this, and in finding herself again. Living in a relationship where one
is battered is so all-consuming that it can threaten to become the womans whole
identity. But a woman who has been abused by her husband is not a battered
woman. She is a woman who has experienced living with a husband who beat
her. There is a great difference. Violence is not the only defining factor in her life.
In order for clinicians to work more effectively with abused women, it is
necessary to develop strategies aimed at helping women to avoid adopting an
identity as a battered woman. Many women try to do that on their own, by deny-
ing the violence, by keeping it a secret, or by becoming experts on freezing
situations. The problem is that the identity as a battered woman, as well as the
various strategies to avoid that identity, offer a too-limited base on which to build
a self-understanding. In the same way, understanding oneself as a survivor (an
understanding that emanates from the man and his violent behaviour), has the
same effect. What the woman needs help to do, is to define herself as the woman
of experience she really is. She has encountered a dark side of female experience
that she shares with other women, in the present as well as in historical times. To
be able to define her in that direction, her story of what she has experienced must
contain more than an account of male dominance and female subordination. This
does not mean that her pain and difficulties should be belittled. It means that in
addition to each story of male violent behaviour there is a parallel story of female
opposition. It means that the history of pain and forced subordination in her life
is accompanied by the history of resistance. These two stories constitute parts of
the abused womans history and both need to be acknowledged.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from the Swedish
Council of Research. I would like to thank Judith L. Herman, Harvard Medical
School, Mary R. Harvey and Priscilla Dass, both at Cambridge Hospital,
Cambridge, MA, and Jane M. Liebschutz, Boston University, for reading an
earlier draft of this paper and making several thoughtful comments. My acknow-
ledgement also goes to the anonymous reviewers for making comments that
helped me shape my thinking.

NOTES

1. Some of the women in this category had immigrated to Sweden with their husbands,
and had residence permits. Most of them had stayed home and taken care of their

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468 Feminism & Psychology 9(4)

families, and had few or no ties to the Swedish labour market. Another group consisted
of refugee women who had left their husbands before the decision on their right to stay
in Sweden was made. Another group of women with non-Nordic origins had been
married to Swedish men whom they had left, or had been left before they received stay-
ing permits (Ansvarsgruppens verksamhetsberttelse fr kvinnohuset 19931997).
These different categories of women were united in that they were subjected to abuse
by their husbands. Otherwise they lived under such widely dissimilar conditions that
different investigations would have been required to examine their situations.
2. One researcher who has worked in the opposite direction is the American feminist and
psychologist Leonore Walker (1984). In order to give women a place in psychiatry,
Walker constructed a special woman a woman characterized by suffering from
Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS). BWS includes cognitive disturbances such as con-
fusion, absent-mindedness, lack of concentration, faulty memory, a markedly retiring
disposition and depression (Walker, 1994).

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Margareta HYDN is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work,

Stockholm University, Sweden, and a psychotherapist in private practice. Her
research interests are in the field of violence against women, family studies and
narrative studies.
ADDRESS: Department of Social Work, Stockholm University, 106 91
Stockholm, Sweden.
[email: Margareta.Hyden@socarb.su.se]

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