ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen a significant revision and expansion of legal definitions of domestic abuse – in particular the inclusion of forms of abuse beyond physical and sexual violence. Coercive control was criminalised in 2015, and the Domestic Abuse bill, currently passing through parliament, further seeks to expand definitions of controlling behaviour. In a recent study published in the journal Violence Against Women, criminologist Jane Monckton-Smith examines 372 murder cases in which the (female) victim had had a relationship with the perpetrator, and identifies an “eight stage relationship progression to homicide”, which includes forms of coercive control. This article reads the relationship between Jane and Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) through the lens of these eight stages, and offers a reassessment of the novel as a domestic abuse narrative. I argue that Rochester clearly follows the pattern identified by Monckton-Smith in his relationships with Jane, Céline Varens, and especially Bertha, and examine the implications of this for both his victims and our understanding of the novel.

摘要

近年来，对家庭虐待的法律定义进行了重大修订和扩展——特别是将虐待形式纳入身体和性暴力之外的形式。强制控制在 2015 年被定为刑事犯罪，目前正在议会通过的家庭虐待法案进一步寻求扩大控制行为的定义。在最近发表在《对妇女的暴力》杂志上的一项研究中，犯罪学家简·蒙克顿-史密斯（Jane Monckton-Smith）检查了 372 起（女性）受害者与犯罪者有过关系的谋杀案，并确定了“向凶杀案发展的八阶段关系”，其中包括强制控制的形式。本文阅读夏洛特勃朗特的《简爱》中简与罗切斯特的关系（1847）通过这八个阶段的镜头，并重新评估小说作为家庭虐待的叙述。我认为罗切斯特在与简、席琳·瓦伦斯，尤其是伯莎的关系中显然遵循了蒙克顿-史密斯所确定的模式，并研究了这对他的受害者和我们对小说的理解的影响。