Physical and emotional abuse carried out by a spouse can warrant different responses, from either the husband or wife, and depending on the situation, the responses could transform into negative or positive behavior. For Paula Spencer, her husband Charlo's continued violent behavior, allows her to establish an array of methods, which she uses to cope with the abuse. Paula's use of alcohol turns abusive itself, as she begins using it to drown her problems away.She also develops a guilty conscience that works against her constantly, either by blaming herself for initiating conflicts, or by just accepting the abuse sometimes.
In addition, when Paula reaches extreme levels of guilt or anger she resorts to drastic methods of dealing with the problems. Charlo's constant degradation of Paula gives no leeway for positive change in her life; rather she becomes self-destructive in order to cope. In this paper, I explain how Paula uses these means to cope with Charlo's constant abuse.Charlo's relationship with Paula, directly influenced her alcoholism, and as the amount of abuse increased her want and or need for alcohol definitely increased, blurring the point at which she believed she began to need it. Paula began drinking alcohol from the time she was about sixteen, and although she continued to drink throughout her life, shortly after she had been with Charlo she could not remember "when [she] stopped liking it and started needing it. " (88).
During her marriage Paula had drunk a considerable amount of alcohol, and knew that her children suffered as a result, even admitting that they had "gone without good food because of my drinking. " (88). Before Charlo had died, Paula drank all day long, reassuring herself that it was not Charlo's fault that she had been drinking. Allowing her guilty conscience to take advantage, she was fighting herself as well as fighting Charlo's abuse with alcohol. After Charlo had died, Paula had gone "off the rails altogether [.
.. ]" (89) and had not been able to remember what had really happened during that period.Being an alcoholic, Paula never enjoys or fully understands the reasons of why she continues to drink. She creates obstacles such as locking the shed in the back with a bottle inside, and at night, she has to run around in the dark to find it, making her habit more difficult.
Paula does cut down considerably to mind the children; however, she remains afflicted by her alcoholism, as her conscience allows her to continue to drink knowingly with her problem. Paula's worst enemy becomes her conscience, continually instructing herself that it was not Charlo's fault that she kept drinking.She uses frequent excuses to make her problems acceptable to live with. In some cases, Paula is unable to cope with the fact that Charlo would hit her. Instead she blames herself, "I fell.
I'd been too near him; he hadn't realised. " (163). In Intimate Partner Violence: Societal, Medical, Legal and Individual Responses Sana Loue states that, "Despite this seeming acceptance of their fate, [battered wives] may remain in their situations due to a lack of power or a perceived lack of power, rather than true acceptance. " (142).In relation to the topic of self-blame and acceptance of abuse, Loue points out that without any means of truly accepting what happens to them, victims of abuse may tend to remain instead of leave, using self-blame as a device to make their situations acceptable as to continue on. In Paula's situation, it seems as if the only way to accept her conditions are to continually blame herself.
She realizes her situation of course, once Charlo has died, "He hit me, he hit his children, he hit other people, he killed a woman - and I keep blaming myself.For provoking him. For not loving him enough; for not showing it. " (170).
Even at the age of thirty-nine, she cannot make a solid connection with the reasons of why she continually blamed herself. During a point in their marriage, Paula seems as if she cannot take any more abuse, and does not want to blame herself any longer, and she seriously contemplates committing suicide to deal with her pregnancy of Leanne. Paula "didn't want to go through it all again [..
. ]" and, according to Love, "Suicide is a not infrequent response to intimate partner violence. (138) Only further displaying Paula's drastic method to deal with bringing another child into the world, out of fear for having to deal with Charlo's reaction to her being pregnant, as well as having the child grow up around the same violence.The perception of Paula's love of Charlo gradually turns into an acceptance of his abuse, when she begins to break down and thinks, "I loved him, he was everything and I was nothing.
I provoked him. I was stupid. I forgot. I needed him. " (177) As she degrades herself further it seems as if she breaks, "I couldn't cope [..
. , I needed him to punish me. I was hopeless and stupid, good for only sex [..
. ]" (177) This thought process, covered by Love states "a battered woman gradually assimilates the violent episodes into her experience, ultimately incorporating them into her "latitude of acceptance" (143) in which the 'latitude' becomes the number of possibilities in which any individual is willing agree or adapt to, and in Paula's ordeal she seems to have begun to accept her abuse as treatment for her ignorance.Her acceptance of this abuse extended to only to herself, however when Charlo had looked at their daughter Nicola, "it was sheer hate. It was clear in his face.
He wanted to ruin her, to kill her. His own daughter" (216) Paula knew right away and something sparked inside of her, she was not going to extend the same excuses to Nicola, it would never be her fault, she would never be responsible. Then Paula acted without thinking, almost instinctively, and she rejoiced in being able to release her frustration and anger upon Charlo "the excitement and terror.It felt so good.
It took years off me. God, it was terrifying [... ] I was killing him. The evil.
He'd killed me and now it was Nicola. But no. No fuckin' way. " (213) During this drastic measure Paula attempts to free her children along with herself from the grasp of Charlo, releasing years of pent up anger and frustration by beating him over the head with a frying pan, and eventually after the struggle, throwing him out. The seventeen-year long struggle that was Paula's "One stinking miserable, gooed lump of days," (206) had transformed her.A marriage that began to escape her home life, which consisted of regular abuse carried out by her father, had led Paula more close to the abuse in which she had tried to escape in the first place.
"One day [she] was Mrs Paula Spencer, a young wife and soon to be a mother, soon moving into a new house, in a new place, making my husbands dinner [... ] Then I was on the floor and that was the end of my life. The future stopped rolling in front of me.
Everything stopped. (168) After that moment in which Charlo first hit her, she had realized that his fist had always been intended for her, no matter what excuses she made for herself, she had been lying to herself, and trying to hide the fact that in reality there was no love between them. The one thing that terrified her more than anything, losing everything she had come to have, trying to save what she made, was that Charlo did not love her, and she had no one else now but her children.
