Domestic Violence Pre-Francine Hughes: How Did The Burning Bed Help Bring Light to the Issue?

The legal and social status of a "battered spouse" pre-Francine Hughes wasn't very impressive in the movie "Burning Bed". Laws protecting women against spousal abuse did not exist during that time. In fact, it wasn't until the late 1960's that feminists and lawyers took action in making the public more aware of spousal abuse (Schneider, 2000).

Feminists in the United States had argued for years that women's legally sanctioned subordination within the family denied them equality and citizenship (Schneider, pp.4). They personally felt that a women's gender (or sex) was an automatic vehicle used against them for subordination. They argued that intimate violence involved placing the woman in a subordinate position by way of her sex. This was normally accomplished through ultimatums. Telling a woman "do this or else" was a threat for her safety and it normally led to physical harm.

Feminists also argued that domestic violence threatened not only women's right to physical integrity and perhaps even life itself, but women's liberty, autonomy, and equality. Yet it was only in the late 1960s that any aspect of this link between violence and equality began to be reflected in law and culture (Schneider, pp.4). For feminists to feel this way about domestic violence and the safety of women, what is it and why place so much effort in bringing public awareness to it?

Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behaviors, accompanied by physical or sexual violence or the threat of such violence, used by one person (to) control his/her current or former intimate partner. The partners may be married or not married, gay or lesbian, living together, separated or dating. The victim of this abuse is referred to as the "survivor," because she in fact often engages in many strategies that help her survive the abuse. The partner engaging in the abuse is referred to as the batterer or assailant (Rogers, 1998).

Women were considered the property of men by law and they had the "right" to correct women when they stepped out of line. It wasn't proper for the law to intervene in domestic disputes involving men and their families. In fact, Anglo-American common law originally provided that a husband, as master of his household, could subject his wife to corporal punishment or "chastisement" if he did not inflict permanent damage upon her. During the nineteenth century, an era of feminist activism for reform of marriage law, English and U.S. authorities declared that a husband no longer had the right to chastise his wife.

Yet for more than a hundred years after courts rejected the right of chastisement, the American legal system continued to treat what was then called wife beating differently from other cases of assault and battery. Authorities denied that a husband had the right to beat his wife, but they rarely intervened in cases of marital violence. Men who assaulted their wives were often granted formal and informal immunities from prosecution, in order to protect the privacy of the family and to promote "domestic harmony" (Schneider, pp.13).

If you look at the movie and observe the behavior of Mickey's mom during the abuse of Francine Hughes, you can only conclude that being abused in a marriage is "normal" and should be tolerated by women. Even Francine's mom stated to her in the garden when she tried to leave Mickey the first time that, in a nutshell, it is normal to be beaten and she simply needs to learn how to deal with it.

Spousal abuse was the "norm" and women simply had to tolerate it. What really makes this matter interesting are the two laws passed during the 1800s that gave men the right to correct their wives.

In 1824, the Supreme Court of Mississippi granted a husband the right to "chastise" his wife. The court limited the punishment to "moderate chastisement" but suggested that a man should not be subjected to "vexatious prosecutions" by his wife for exercising that right, and that courts should not reveal private conduct to the public. In 1836, a New Hampshire court held that a wife who did not submit to the legitimate authority of her husband and who manifested characteristics "unbecoming a lady" could not obtain a divorce.

The court also indicated that "a woman who provoked her husband's anger, and who refused to remain silent in the face of his temper, deserved any abuse inflicted upon her as a result of her disobedience and had no cause for complaint." Because the husband was head of the household and the law made the husband responsible for his wife's debts, crimes committed in his presence, and torts, the law gave him authority to control her actions.

Reflecting the social ambivalence that continues today, the New Hampshire court concluded that "although society condemned the husband's unmanly conduct in beating his wife, it abhorred even more the wife's unseemly rebellion against the proper exercise of his authority (Schneider, pp. 14).

The Hughes case played an important role for the development of the "battered spouse defense" in many ways. In the movie, the attorney gave a plea of temporary insanity, and this is how most cases are tried where the woman kills her abuser in self-defense. The reason why women have to put in a plea of temporary insanity is because the courts and society perceives women who kill their abusers as committing a heinous crime, and when a plea of self-defense is submitted, it doesn't hold in court.

William Blackstone said it best when he stated that a woman who killed her husband was
committing "treason"; "If the baron kills his feme it is the same as if he had killed a stranger, or any other person; but if the feme kills her baron, it is regarded by the laws as a much more atrocious crime, as she not only breaks through the restraints of humanity and conjugal affection, but throws off all subjection to the authority of her husband. And therefore, the law denominates hercrime a species of treason, and condemns her to the same punishment as if she had killed the king.

And for every species of treason...the sentence of women was to be drawn and burnt alive." Based on the confluence of these factors, the equal rights argument holds that battered women who kill are more likely to be viewed as crazy than reasonable; thus they are likely to face substantial hurdles in asserting self-defense and to be limited in the range of defense options available at trial (Schneider, pp.114).

There is a movement by feminists to have battered women included within the traditional framework of the criminal law and tried like other criminal defendants. Women who are accused of killing their spouses in self-defense should have the same trial as other people, including men, who are accused of murder. Unfortunately, however, social and cultural experience continues to confirm that women who act violently toward men, even in self-defense - whether in the movies (Thelma and Louise) or in life (Lorena Bobbitt) - are viewed with particular horror (Schneider, pp. 115).

The available alternatives for women who do kill their abusers in self-defense are the insanity defense and the range of partial responsibility or impaired mental state defenses, which vary among jurisdictions. If a defendant pleads insanity, she claims that, owing to her mental condition at the time of the act, she is not guilty because she either did not know what she was doing or did not know that it was wrong.

The insanity defense is usually a "complete" defense, in the sense that the defendant is not legally responsible for the act committed. However, a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity most often results in institutionalization for an indefinite period of time. Some, but not all, jurisdictions recognize partial responsibility or impaired mental state defenses, such as heat-of-passion and intoxication, where a successful defense will mitigate the act and reduce a charge from murder to manslaughter (Schneider, pp.117).

Now that the public and the legal system is aware of domestic abuse and the possibility of a woman killing her abuser in self-defense, the courts can advocate for a better and fair system in trying women for their crimes. There are feminists and other people who are interested in making the legal system try cases in this matter fairly and equally like any criminal in the system. It is unfortunate to look at cases such as these in the context of wrongful death, but that is how the public views a woman who kills her abuser in self-defense. Now with public attention drawn to cases like Francine Hughes and Lorena Bobbitt, we are all aware of incidents involving spousal abuse and the tragic outcome if the system does not intervene properly to help women in circumstances like this.

I want to express that gender violence takes place on all levels. There have been cases where women have physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually abused men. What makes cases like this difficult to prove is the sociological belief that women are weaker than men and it is difficult, not to mention embarrassing, for men to admit and prove that they are being abused by women. With domestic abuse in the forefront of everyone's consciousness across the globe, it is becoming known as gender violence. However, feminists are still pushing for this issue to remain as a battle for feminists as opposed to a "social problem" that needs to be combated by the nation as a whole.

The move to educate the public about domestic violence, or gender violence, can be seen with October as the official Domestic Violence Awareness Month and by having a federal Office of Violence Against Women in the Justice Department. All of this is wonderful and great, but feminists believe that the real reason behind domestic abuse -- gender subordination -- is not being addressed. Gender subordination is the reason behind the movement and that can be seen in materials publicized on television, women's studies and sociology courses, literature, brochures, pamphlets, etc. It is now the belief by feminists that domestic violence is being treated as a problem in isolation without any referrals to the historical and social context of the true beginnings of this movement.

Paradoxically, it is the exciting development of an explicitly feminist international human rights campaign on gender violence that has garnered worldwide attention. This campaign, which began in a series of conferences in the 1990s and led to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995, continues today and has mobilized women around the world.

This human rights framework places women at the center, defines the problem of intimate violence as "gender violence," and recognizes the indivisibility of violence, reproductive choice and sexual equality, workplace discrimination, wage equity, child care, and health care. Consequently, the rallying cry for many feminists who continue to do trailblazing work on battering in the United States has been, as women's international human rights scholar Rhonda Copelon has put it, to "bring Beijing home," to reshape domestic violence work in this country with the explicitly feminist political and expansive social vision that first inspired the issue's advocates (Schneider, pp. 28).

As stated earlier in the paper, attorneys feel that it is best to defend women who have killed their abusers with the temporary insanity plea. This in itself is considered the battered woman defense. Feminists personally feel that women should be tried and treated like any other criminal on trial without special defenses. The problem lies in trying to convince the jurors that the woman was justified in what she did by showing areas of abuse in the case. People involved in the legal system all agree that there is, or should be, a battered spouse defense. Feminists, on the other hand, have never argued for one and personally believe that one should not exist ever.

Judicial opinions in a number of self-defense cases involving battered women correctly observe that there is no separate "battered woman syndrome" defense. Yet evidence of battering is crucial in dispelling jurors' preconceptions about battered women, and in helping jurors to understand how a woman's experience of being battered influences her understanding of the level of danger she is in and her reaction to the perceived danger. Evidence of battering in a self-defense case is not relevant to justify the killing, but it provides the jury with the appropriate context in which to decide whether a woman's apprehension of imminent danger of death or great bodily harm was reasonable (Schneider, pp. 124).

The domestic violence movement has come a long way from the times of the Romans and Colonials until now. The courts are changing as well to accommodate women who are being tried in killing their abusers. Although this country, and the world, has shown progress on this issue through education and advocacy, there is still a long ways to go in helping women, on every level, who are affected by domestic abuse.

References

Geraghty, Sara. (1998). Clemency for Battered Women in Michigan: A Manual for Attorneys, Law Students and Social Workers (1-11).
Ann Arbor, MI: ACLU Michigan.

Battered Women's Clemency Project. Schneider, Elizabeth M. (2000). "Battered Women & Feminist Lawmaking (3-124).
Harrisonburg, VA: R.R. Donnelley & Sons.