‘I Must Have Been an Idiot to Let it Go On’: Agency and Positioning in Battered Women’s Narratives of Leaving

Abstract

To be assaulted is to be subjected to an illegal action and confronted with one’s own helplessness and powerlessness. It also requires confronting one’s own actions, aimed at protection and resistance. This article examines the relationships between male violence and female resistance by focusing on agency, i.e. the relationships between power, responsibility and activity as reflected in the various ways battered women positioned themselves in their narratives of leaving. Three basic positions were identified casting the victimized woman as: Wounded, Self-blaming, or Bridge-building. These positions are associated with relational themes such as vulnerability, isolation and connectedness. The overall message of the article is to urge feminists to return to the roots of feminist theorizing of men’s violence towards women, and to include women’s strategies of resisting the violence in that theorizing.