Misreading Justice: The Rhetoric Of Revenge In Feminist Texts About Domestic Violence

Abstract

Feminist legal theories of battering homicides pose a challenge to feminist critics of American literature. Legal theorists argue that many women who are tried for killing their abusive partners should be acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. While they have had some success, stereotypes suggesting that women who kill are vengeful result in the wrongful convictions of too many female defendants. Feminist narratives that depict women who kill their abusers abound in American literature. Too often the scholarship on these narratives conflates revenge and self-defense, contributing to the problems feminist lawyers face. Looking at literature and legal scholarship from the nineteen-teens to the present, I illustrate how feminist literary critics and feminist legal theorists are sometimes at odds with one another, despite sharing the goal of creating a society that better protects and represents women. Keeping feminist legal issues in mind, I ask why scholars have conflated self-defense and revenge in their analyses of narratives that depict battering homicides. Some scholars take their cues from feminist texts that equate violence with empowerment. Other critics recognize the way some authors and performers treat the death of male abusers as fodder for entertainment, critiquing the way society fails to take violence against women seriously. Additionally, as justice scholars point out, the criminal justice system suggests that revenge is a natural response to victimization. Revenge fantasies seem to follow "naturally" from this system. In Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization, Ladelle McWhorter points out that oppressive networks of power must be challenged by technologies of the self that contradict the driving interests of the network being opposed. If McWhorter is correct, then using revenge fantasies to critique violence against women will not create a society that better supports women. Recognizing this problem, I argue that feminist literary scholars and artists look for ways to transform the self that preclude violence. Texts as diverse as Alice Walker's The Color Purple and the Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye Earl" illustrate the way vengeful fantasies can be replaced by pleasurable activities that counter punitive networks of power and help their audiences imagine peaceful communities.