AKA “How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cycle of Abuse”

darkdominion

Tumperkin kindly sent a category romance by one of her favorite Old Skool romance novelists, Charlotte Lamb. I did enjoy reading it, and recognize the author’s skill. I felt she excelled especially in portraying complex human motivations, and the dynamics of an abusive relationship. I also enjoyed the way it was “dated” — quiche served at a party, divorce just coming into fashion. But I could not read this book as a romance.

In this book, published by Mills & Boon and Harlequin in 1979, Caroline and James’s marriage is on the skids. These two opposites (James is a mature, distinguished, austere, intellectual lawyer who enjoys Scotch, quiet socializing, and raping and beating his wife, and Caroline is a former aspiring actress who used to like wild parties with the Bohemian crowd and now dares not speak until spoken to), enjoyed a whirlwind courtship after they literally ran into each other on the streets of London. One look into James’s “icy gray eyes” did not, alas, alarm her, but instead sent Caroline headlong into marriage. Since her miscarriage of a baby she wanted but James did not, their marriage has become a sham. They barely speak and sleep in separate bedrooms.

When the story opens, Caroline visits a friend from her former life, who disapproves of the changes marriage to James has wrought in her once spunky, outgoing friend. With Maggie’s support, Caroline gets a makeover and a little self-esteem back, rediscovers her passion for acting, and finds herself the object of the affections of her charming, wildly successful actor friend, Jake.

If you were me, you would read this as the beginning of a hopeful story of a woman who escapes her batterer and starts a new life, a la Blue Eyed Devil. Alas, this is just the first few pages, and the rest of the book is devoted to saving Caroline’s marriage to James.

According to the CDC, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men in the US are victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives (CDC).  If you answer ‘yes’ to even one of the following questions, you may be one of them (National Domestic Violence Hotline). Hmmm, how would Caroline answer?

Does your partner:

  • Embarass you with putdowns?

“I can’t stand that dress– it makes you look drab. … I’m sick of seeing you wandering around this house like a ghost.”

“You adulterous little bitch.” (in front of others)

Caroline: “I did some thinking.” James: “God, women should be banned from it!”

  • Look at you or act in ways that scare you?

Caroline rehearsed the way she would ask James, her fingers writhing together in anxious preparation. I’m frightened of him, she thought.

  • Control what you do, who you see or talk to or where you go?

The humble begging voice she had grown used to using with James.

  • Stop you from seeing your friends or family members?

“She had barely noticed as he quietly peeled her away from her friends, the ironic lift of his dark brows enough to curtail any meeting with one.”

On her house: “James had kept her in it like Snow White in her glass casket, airless and lifeless.”

James also punches Jake, and at another point Caroline is concerned James will kill Jake.

  • Make all of the decisions?

“She knew better than to argue.”

  • Prevent you from working or attending school?

Maggie: “You should never have given up your career.” Caroline: “That was the way James wanted it.”

  • Act like the abuse is no big deal, it’s your fault, or even deny doing it?

James: “You provoked me to it… you realise that? I’m not made of stone.”

  • Shove you, slap you, choke you, or hit you?

Scene 1: The Rape

“You bitch,” he muttered, teeth tight. His hands circled her throat and her eyes darkened as they hardened into iron bands.

“Caro”, he groaned into her mouth, and his body drove into her while she silently shrieked a bitter protest. Abruptly, as though that lifted her above what was happening, she went cold and stiff. He seemed unaware of it, moving on her urgently, a sharp pleasure in the sound he made, and she heard him with angry hostility. He was using her body against her will, and she felt like an object. She hated him.” (this rape causes red marks and bruises on Caroline’s arms, shoulder, breasts)

Scene 2: The beating/forced seduction

“His hand hit her across the face and she was knocked off balance, falling across the bed.”

  • Threaten to kill you?

“I’d kill you first” (in resoonse to Caroline’s threat to leave James for Jake)

“I was so jealous I could have killed you.”

“I’m afraid that one day I’ll kill you.”

  • Threaten to commit suicide?

Yes, but I can’t find the page!

FYI, here are the items on the list which James did not do. Clearly he needs to go back to the Old Skool if he wants to be the perfect abuser!

  • Intimidate  you with guns, knives or other weapons?
  • Force you to try and drop charges?
  • Destroy your property or threaten to kill your pets?
  • Tell you that you’re a bad parent or threaten to take away or hurt your children?
  • Take your money or Social Security check, make you ask for money or refuse to give you money?

Domestic violence falls into a pattern, which experts refer to a “cycle of abuse”, in which tension building (breakdown of communication, abuser becomes angry, victim feels frightened, tries to keep the peace by making accommodations) is followed by an incident (physical, sexual or emotional abuse), which is followed by making up (apology, promises, blame the victim, deny abuse took place), followed by calm (meeting promises, victim becomes hopeful the abuse has ended).

Dark Dominion followed this pattern to the “T”.

In this novel, James’s abuse stems from his jealousy of Caroline and his fear of losing her. If he isolates her, he figures there will be fewer threats to his control of her. Caroline tries to find the root — perhaps a bad upbringing, she suggests? –  for this irrational fear, but James asserts, “It’s just a kink in my nature.” I thought that was an interesting choice on Lamb’s part:  Today, even Willy Wonka and the Grinch get explanatory bad childhoods.

In the novel, Caroline’s growth is signaled by the fact that she identifies James’s behavior as problematic. She doesn’t go as far as I would like. For example, she doesn’t refer to her rape as a rape, but rather as a “barbaric explosion of jealousy”, but since it is 2009 and marital rape is still considered a lesser crime in many states than “regular rape”, I will chalk this up to the times. However, Caroline begins to stand up to James, and she gets him to admit to his jealousy, an admission which hurts his masculine pride mightily.

Even at the end, after Caroline gives birth, she thinks, “the one thing that worried her was how he would react to the birth of the child. She was afraid he would resent the intrusion of a third between them.” Of course, he’s thrilled with the baby (even though it’s a girl, something else Caroline worried about, because “James would want a boy.”), a sign that James has changed.

Signaling another major shift, James actually develops a friendship with Jake. Caroline thinks, “Whatever Jake had said to him had altered him.” I found it interesting that Caroline gives credit to James’s turnaround not to herself, but to Jake.

Attesting to his new understanding of human relationships, James says, “I discovered that love is like the amoeba — divide it, and it multiplies, and more you stretch love, the further it goes … it’s elastic stuff.”

But what about Caroline? Why did she choose James over Jake? It must be said, first of all, that Jake also insulted her, was prone to fits of jealousy, gave her punishing — at times unwanted — kisses, and manipulated Caroline, so he was no postfeminist prize either. But he was a veritable Dawson Leery in comparison to James.  Caroline knew James had a “darkness” Jake lacked, but she was drawn to it:

“Two jealous men, she thought wryly. She felt like the bone between two savage dogs, but of the two Jake was easier to cope with; he did not frighten her, and James did. She was not sure of James. There was a brooding darkness in him which frightened her, drew her and frightened her at one and the same time.”

It’s another interesting choice of Lamb’s, given the alph-hole hero, that Caroline is genuinely unsure which man she prefers for a time, and enjoys kissing and caressing Jake very much. It is unusual in today’s romance for the heroine to feel lust towards anyone but the hero once they meet.

Caroline chooses James because “something in her nature turned finally towards the dark uncertainties of James’s character, partly because she knew in her heart of hearts which one of them needed her most.” When she finally dumps Jake, instead of reacting with jealous rage, he reacts with “the shrug of resignation she knew he would give”, proving to Caroline which man truly loves her. Nothing says true love like jealous rages, I guess.

Jake asks her, “And does what you feel come into this at any point, Caro?” She thinks, “last night she had told herself she would choose according to her own needs, but in the end she had chosen differently, and she knew it.”

On the other hand, James is meeting at least some of Caroline’s needs. Whether they are healthy needs is an open question for this reader. Not everything we want is good for us. She says: “I won’t deny you hurt me tonight and I won’t deny I enjoyed it”, after the second rough sex/forced seduction episode. While Caroline reads her own admission as a kind of sexual assertiveness, I found it hard to agree, given that consent was utterly lacking in the scene.

Caroline recognizes that she cannot leave James: “I can’t live without him” she tells Maggie.

Caroline’s “strength” is shown in lines like this: “Once she would have shrunk away from the cold front he was now showing her, but now she was going to thaw it even if it took a lifetime.”

Later, in a bit of a subversive twist, which is another example of what makes Lamb interesting to me as a writer, Caroline thinks, “At the back of her head, a little voice asked warningly if she could take this endless effort to soothe his jealousy, but she brushed it away.”

Of course I felt that Caroline should have listened to that voice, aka the voice of reason. I wanted her to see that her “need” for James is not natural or primal, but the result of  gender socialization which tells her as a woman that she must have pity and compassion, not anger, mercy, not justice, that she must think of others, not herself, that she is less valuable without a man, and that to be needed by a man — to rescue James from himself –  is her raison d’etre. These heterosexual gender norms are compounded by the psychological effects of James’s abuse –  including acute depression. I wanted to throw the book across the room when Caroline blamed her own nostalgia for her single life for James’ behavior. She says, “that was what went wrong with my marriage … I couldn’t get over the dreams we shared, you [Maggie], me, and Jake.”

In the fantasy world Lamb creates, a woman’s love turns a bad man good, she becomes stronger and more resilient the more she is beaten down, and an abuser can stop all at once just by willing it. I can see why that would be appealing. Unfortunately, in the real world, it is more likely that her will love keep her in the relationship and get her killed, her self-esteem and identity will be destroyed by abuse, and the cycle of abuse will not stop until she leaves him or is killed by him.

Are such fantasies empowering?

I’ll end here with a final tension. We are meant to celebrate the gentle, loving James of the last pages, who helps his wife breastfeed, teases her gently, and buys her flowers. But we are also told over and over that Caroline needs the “darkness” in James. We are told that it is in his nature to be primal, possessive, and dark, and in her nature to want it.

Can they have it both ways?

I enjoyed reading this book, thinking about it, and blogging about it. Thanks T!


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