Intimate partner violence encompasses not just physical abuse, but also psychological tactics like gaslighting, isolation, and control, which can be equally damaging and need to be recognized as serious forms of violence.
Author
Santwana Dwivedy, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India
Summary
Conversations on intimate partner violence focus on visible acts of physical, sexual, and mental abuse. The chapter explores psychological tactics such as gaslighting, isolation, intimidation, humiliation, and control as a distinct category of violence against the backdrop of Meena Kandasamy’s ‘When I Hit You Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife’. The narrator in the novel recounts her life after marriage to reveal to the reader the covert psychological tactics used by her husband that irrigate intimate spaces for more overt forms of violence to thrive. In doing so, the narrator draws our attention to the criticality and complexity of the true dimensions of intimate partner violence.
The chapter analyses psychological tactics as emotional and psychological violence through the lens of the narrator’s experience as a victim to fill critical gaps in the sociological understanding of intimate partner violence. The chapter draws on themes that emerge from the novel to demonstrate the role of gender imbalances within the institution of marriage that are critical in sustaining violence. The overarching objective of the analysis is to deepen and widen the ‘intimate violence framework’ to include psychological tactics as a serious form of violence.
Published in: Sustainable Development Goals Series
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