![]() So, yeah, things get pretty existential for her once her role as "wife" appears to be over. What wrong have I done? What was that I have been living with? (2.128) For as she looked at the dead man, her mind, cold and detached, said clearly: "Who am I? What have I been doing? I have been fighting a husband who did not exist. Each time he had taken her, they had been two isolated beings, far apart as now. There had been nothing between them, and yet they had come together, exchanging their nakedness repeatedly. Was this what it all meant-utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In dread she turned her face away. To make matters worse, once he's gone, she feels devastated by a newfound sense that she never really knew her husband at all-that they had been strangers the entire time and never knew it: It does not appear that she found this role particularly gratifying to hear her tell it, a lot of her married life entailed waiting for her husband to come home drunk. ![]() Yes, you guessed, it-the narrative also refers to Elizabeth multiple times as "the wife" rather than using her name. ![]() ![]() In that moment, she seems to feel fairly detached, like her life (or at least, her life with her husband) didn't really have much meaning-but her role as a mother makes sense to her and seems to anchor her at least a tiny bit during all that uncertainty and emotional chaos. She was a mother-but how awful she knew it now to have been a wife. He and she were only channels through which life had flowed to issue in the children. After Walter dies, for example, she thinks to herself: She seems to view parenthood as kind of the ultimate role. In any case, the title isn't exactly inaccurate she's got two kids, John and Annie, and she's pregnant with a third. In the third reference to Elizabeth (and many times afterwards), she is identified simply as "the mother." Well, at least it's more specific than woman? Perhaps we're getting somewhere. seriously, that's all we're getting? He still doesn't give her a name-we have to wait about 30 more paragraphs for that. In the second reference to Elizabeth, the narrator then goes on to "elaborate" that she is "a tall woman of imperious mien, handsome, with definite black eyebrows" (1.4). Since there was "a woman" walking up the railway tracks just a couple of paragraphs before this (a different one, apparently), this first reference to our heroine doesn't really make her stand out to us. She closed and padlocked the door, then drew herself erect, having brushed some bits from her white apron. The first time we meet Elizabeth, Lawrence's language doesn't really give us a clue that this is going to be our main character she's simply "a woman":Ī woman came stooping out of the felt-covered fowl-house, half-way down the garden. As a result, the story kind of paints Elizabeth in broad brushstrokes, focusing less on her as her and more on the roles she plays as a woman, mother, and wife. However, the story maintains a kind of detachment from all of its characters, her included. You can find my University staff web page here.Elizabeth is no doubt the protagonist of this tale. ![]() Exploring the barriers to help-seeking for male victims of domestic violence(with colleagues at University of Cumbria).Exploring the impact of walking and the outdoors on men’s experiences of “recovery” from domestic violence (with colleagues at University of Cumbria and UCLan).Examining how men move on from their abusive experiences through the use of photo elicitation (with colleagues at University of Cumbria).Exploring men’s experiences of having their relationship with their children disrupted and the relationship with experiences of domestic violence (with colleagues at University of West London).Exploring men’s post-separation experiences of domestic violence (with colleagues at University of Cumbria).Examining older men’s experiences of domestic violence (with colleagues at Teeside University).My current projects and collaborators are: I also do work more broadly within the area of domestic violence and abuse. I am a senior lecturer in psychology and my specialist research area is working with male victims of female perpetrated intimate partner violence. ![]()
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