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 DOI: 10.1177/0959353510384831 2011 21: 29 originally published online 15 November 2010Feminism & Psychology

Viveka Enanderviolence

Leaving Jekyll and Hyde: Emotion work in the context of intimate partner  

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DOI: 10.1177/0959353510384831

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Article

Leaving Jekyll and Hyde:Emotion work in thecontext of intimatepartner violence

Viveka EnanderInstitutionen for socialt arbete/Department of Social Work

Goteborg SE-405 30, Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate battered women’s emotion work in

the context of male-to-female intimate partner violence and, more specifically, in the

context of leaving violent men. A total of 22 informants were interviewed and the

material consists of 47 interviews. The results suggest a process in which victims initially

conceptualize abusers as good, but subjection to violence leads to a cognitive-emotive

dissonance that is responded to by emotion work. Over time, conceptualizations of the

abuser shift from good to bad and efforts are made to change emotions from warm to

cold. Connections between this process and previously described leaving processes are

discussed.

Keywords

battered women, domestic violence, emotion work, leaving processes

Introduction

Male-to-female intimate partner violence is a common social phenomenon withsevere consequences for the victims (Campbell, 2002; Samelius, 2007; Smith, et al.,2002). A pattern of abuse has been described in which abusers may adopt severaldifferent controlling strategies such as isolation, verbal harassment, control offamily finances, destruction of important things for the victim (such as photosand letters), threats/intimidation and physical and sexual violence (Kirkwood,1993; Pence and Paymar, 1993; Strauchler et al., 2004). Several researchers haveemphasized that abusers also display what seems to be love and care; they analyse

Corresponding author:

Viveka Enander, Institutionen for socialt arbete/Department of Social Work Goteborg SE-405 30, Sweden

Email: aqut@hotmail.com

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this as part of the abusive pattern (Graham et al., 1994; Lundgren, 2004;Yoshihama, 2005). The reported effects on victims are confusion, altered percep-tion and increased bonding to abusers (Barnett, 2001; Dutton and Painter, 1981;Herman, 1992).

Lundgren (2004), for example, describes ‘alternation between violence andwarmth’ as a key feature in abusers’ gaining and maintaining control. Similarly,Graham et al. (1994) point out that the abusive pattern includes ‘kindness’ as wellas cruelty, with the following consequences for the victims:

With the perception of kindness and hope the victim denies any feelings of danger,

terror, and rage that the abuser creates in her or him. The denial occurs because the

terror, and thus danger, is experienced as overwhelming . . . , and the rage, if

expressed, invites retaliation by the abuser. Such denial allows the victim to commence

bonding to the positive side of the abuser’ (1994: 38)

This ‘bonding to the positive side of the abuser’ can also be interpreted in termsof emotion work. Sociologist Arlie Russel Hochschild (1979, 2003[1983]) intro-duced the concepts of emotion work and feeling rules to cover how emotions are‘managed’ in different ways to align with cultural prescriptions. Trying to alignone’s feelings with what one wants or thinks it is right to feel toward an intimatepartner would be to follow the feeling rules of love and commitment. Emotionwork would then entail focusing on the abuser’s positive sides. If one was, con-trarily, trying to fall out of love, emotion work would entail focusing on theabuser’s negative sides.

The aim of this study is to investigate battered women’s emotion work in thecontext of male-to-female intimate partner violence, especially in the context ofleaving abusive men. What kind of emotion work is discernible in the informants’accounts of living with and leaving abusive men? How is emotion work connectedto leaving?

Previous research

Within the field of domestic violence, considerable research has been conducted onviolent relationship dynamics and much effort has been devoted to explorationsand explanations of ‘why battered women stay’ (for reviews, see Barnett, 2000,2001). The issue of what finally motivates battered women to leave abusive men hasalso been studied, including qualitative research conceptualizing leaving as a pro-cess (Anderson and Saunders, 2003). Researchers with this approach suggest thatleaving an abusive partner is not a single event but a process extending over time,involving temporary break-ups and preparatory strategies; they conceptualized itas a process of disentanglement occurring in different stages or phases (e.g.Enander and Holmberg; 2008; Holmberg and Enander, 2004; Khaw andHardesty, 2007; Kirkwood, 1993; Landenburger, 1989; Merrit-Gray and Wuest,1995; Moss et al., 1997; Rosen and Stith, 1997).

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Many leaving as a process studies have found that when women begin ‘toredefine the relationship as abusive and label themselves as victims’ (Andersonand Saunders, 2003: 175–6), it leads to a termination of the abusive relationship.Enander and Holmberg (2008), however, envisaged this redefinition and labellingof abusive experiences as a separate process predominantly taking place afterthe woman has left the abuser. Although the women in our study did conveyan increasing awareness of negative experiences during the course of therelationship, the pattern we observed was reluctance to label these experiencesin terms of violence and victimisation until after the break-up. The ‘cognitiveshift’ described in several studies (Ferraro and Johnson, 1983; Goetting,1999; Khaw and Hardesty, 2007; Landenburger, 1989; Patzel, 2001; Rosen andStith, 1997) may thus entail reconceptualization, but not necessarily in such clearterms.

When it comes to emotion, some researchers have described altered emotions,such as losing hope of change (Enander and Holmberg, 2008; Ferraro andJohnson, 1983; Holmberg and Enander, 2004; Hyden, 1994; Landenburger, 1989;NiCarthy, 1987) or mobilizing anger, (Ferraro and Johnson, 1983; Kirkwood,1993; Landenburger, 1989) as an impetus for leaving. Enander and Holmberg(2008) described the emotions of love, fear, hate, compassion, guilt and hope asties creating a traumatic bond binding women to their abusers. Leaving – in itswidest sense – was seen as disentanglement from this bond.

In this study, attention is devoted primarily to emotion and emotion work.Emotion is regarded as intrinsically connected to cognition, which will thus alsobe discussed. While emotion work in intimate heterosexual relationships has beenthe focus of several studies (e.g. Duncombe and Marsden, 1993; Minotte et al.,2007, Strazdins and Broom, 2004), emotion work in relation to violence againstwomen, or rather, women leaving violent men, has not been extensively studied;this is the explicit focal point of this paper.

Material and method

This article is based on qualitative interview material with women who have leftabusive men. A total of 22 informants, in two different groups, were interviewed;the material consists of 47 interviews. All interviews except one were tape-recordedand transcribed verbatim. One informant declined tape-recording; extensive noteswere taken instead. Confidentiality and secure treatment of data were guaranteedto all informants.

Informant Group I consists of 10 women, located via women’s shelters through-out Sweden. These informants were interviewed three times, the first two times inperson and the third time by telephone. Three informants declined further partic-ipation after the first interview and one could not be located for the closing tele-phone interview, yielding 23 completed interviews.

Informant Group II consists of 12 women recruited through public noticeboards in Goteborg. Each informant was interviewed twice in person, generally

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within a period of one to three weeks, except in three cases in which months elapsedbetween the first and second interviews. All informants participated on both inter-view occasions, yielding a total of 24 interviews.

Some differences between the two informant groups deserve attention; the mostimportant are shelter contact and length of study period. Group I was originallyrecruited for a study on battered women’s leaving processes (Enander andHolmberg 2008; Holmberg and Enander 2004). For this study, women with sheltercontact were interviewed three times during three years, at one-year intervals, toenable an analysis of whether the informants’ conceptualizations of their reasonsfor leaving were constant or changed. To further investigate some questions evokedby and themes discovered in these interviews, new informants were recruited andinterviewed. A longitudinal approach did not seem warranted, but only womenwithout shelter contact were recruited to this second informant group, in order tobroaden the material.

Informants in Group I had thus received assistance from shelters and had pre-sumably discussed their experiences with shelter staff and volunteers. In contrast,Group II informants had rarely shared their experiences – or discussed them – inthis way; one informant stated that participating in the study entailed telling some-one in detail for the first time ever about her experiences of abuse. However, whilesome informants in Group I had had very brief contact with the shelter, someinformants in Group II had actively participated in support groups in which dis-courses on violence were similar to those found in shelter settings. Similarities anddifferences regarding earlier disclosure and discussion of violence therefore existboth between and within the informant groups.

Furthermore, the two groups differ somewhat when it comes to class andurbanity/rurality. The class profile in Group I is more diverse, while informantsin Group II have a narrower middle-/upper-middle-class profile: all but one hadsome university-level education, five had graduated and one had moved on topostgraduate studies. Furthermore, Group II is more urban because these inter-views were conducted in the same large city. Another difference between the twogroups is the interval between break-up and participation in the study. While allinformants were interviewed post-separation, informants in Group I could haveleft quite recently. In the case of Group II, however, one of the participationcriteria was that informants should have left the abusers at least one year priorto participation. This criterion was ethically motivated because informantswithout shelter contact were sought. It was considered crucial that they notbe actively involved in abusive relationships or in acute crisis, in order toavoid endangering or unsettling women who might have no other supportivecontacts.

Other important demographic information on the 22 informants in both groupsis as follows: participants ranged in age from 24 to 61 and had different levels ofeducation, with (nine-year) compulsory school as the lowest. All were white, 18were ethnic Swedes and four had immigrant backgrounds. All informants had beencohabiting with, and 13 had children with, the respective abusive partner.

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Two participants had survived two abusive relationships. Relationship durationvaried from under 1 to 25 years and the time elapsed from the point of finalseparation ranged from quite recently to as much as 20 years ago.

Interviews were semi-structured and focused, in the case of Group I, on infor-mants’ interpretations of why they had left their abusers. This yielded rich materialcovering extensive experiences of both living with and leaving abuse. Subsequently,the Group II interviews focused on the informants’ interpretations of similar kindsof experiences and of themselves and their abusers.

The study is both explorative and inductive and research questions have sur-faced and been included throughout the whole research process. My approachwas hermeneutic, both in general methodology as well as in the analysis.Interpretation, theoretically based in feminist theory on violence against womenand the sociology of emotions, has thus been a key feature throughout the pro-cess. Several analytic modes were applied in an intuitive ad hoc manner, asdescribed by Kvale (1996). The choice of emotion work as the main analyticaltool resulted from the first analyses of the material and was not originally part ofthe research design. Although the informant groups differed as described above,emotion work was evident and displayed similar features in both sources ofmaterial, which were analysed jointly. The analysis was begun by listening tothe interview tapes and reading the transcribed interviews, pen in hand, and amodified thematic analysis (Aronson, 1994) was performed in the search forrecurrent themes. The themes of relevance for this study touched on abusiveex-partners being described as Jekyll and/or Hyde, on rationales for stayingand leaving, and on emotions and cognitions described in connection to this.In accordance with the hermeneutical tradition of interpretation, ‘parts’ havebeen related to the ‘whole’ and vice versa in a reflexive process (Kvale, 1996).In practice this means that passages touching on similar themes have been com-pared within each interview, between interviews with the same informants,between interviews with other informants and in relation to the material as awhole. Thus I have, in line with Haavind, (2000) tried to maintain a ‘vertical’ –(within interview analysis) as well as ‘horizontal’ (between interviews analysis)mode of approaching the material.

Further, the themes have been investigated in light of feminist theory on violenceagainst women and the emotion sociological framework presented below. Again,this has been a highly reflexive process, where the findings have been compared,contrasted and challenged by the literature and vice versa.

Finally, some important limitations to this study must be noted. No womenactively involved in abusive relationships were interviewed (for the reasonsgiven above). If women currently involved with the abuser had been included, itmay have been possible to obtain a clearer picture of emotion work womenengage in before leaving. Furthermore, the role of significant others in (re)concep-tualizations and emotion work is absent; covering this topic would haveexpanded and deepened the analysis, but it was unfortunately beyond the scopeof this study.

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Analytical framework

Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (2003[1983]) writing on emotion work is thepoint of departure for this analysis. Hochschild uses the concept to cover the dif-ferent ways in which we try to manage our feelings: when we try not to be sad on ahappy occasion or try to show sincere grief at a funeral, when we rein in our anger,swallow our pride or put a damper on our love. Hochschild envisages two kinds ofemotion work: surface acting and deep acting. In surface acting we merely play theexpected part; i.e. we aim to display a certain feeling we believe is required withoutactually feeling it, as when we feign interest or display unfelt cordiality. Deepacting, however, requires more than feigning and occurs, according toHochschild, in two ways: ‘by directly exhorting feeling’ and ‘by making indirectuse of a trained imagination’ (2003[1983]: 38). In the first case, we ‘address’ ourfeelings directly; we ‘order’ ourselves to feel less, more, at all or differently. In thesecond case, we use our imagination to achieve this; by picturing to ourselves howdesperate a friend in need must be, for example, we may overcome our ambivalenceto devoting the time and energy to give help and care. Or – relevant to this study –by focusing only on the bad memories of a person we want not to love, we mayeventually manage to fall out of love, a change that is difficult to achieve by onlygiving ourselves ‘orders’ not to love.

In deep acting we aim not only at the emotional display we consider to be ‘right’,we try to align our feelings with this ‘right’. Thus, the purpose of deep acting is tomake feigning unnecessary; as a result of deep acting, feigned interest may becomereal and unfelt cordiality become heartfelt. What, then, is this ‘right’ way of feelingand how do we know what is ‘right’? In response, Hochschild turns from thepsychological to the sociological realm, by introducing the concept of feelingrules. Drawing on Goffman (1956, 1967), who pointed out that emotions – or,more specifically, embarrassment – was not a disturbing outcome but rather animportant part of social interaction, Hochschild pictures social systems as entailingfeeling rules that govern who owes what feelings to whom. Being a ‘subterranean’part of social systems, feeling rules are most easily discernible when broken; weglimpse a feeling rule in statements such as ‘at least you could have shown somegratitude’ or ‘you might have tried to be happy for my sake’. Feeling rules areshared within social groups; we can aim at breaking or surpassing them, but theyare generally ‘known’ and internally acknowledged.

Dissonance is a central concept to this study. Social psychologist Leon Festinger(1957) formulated the classical theory of cognitive dissonance. According toFestinger, people holding contradictory cognitions will experience a strain thatthey will wish to reduce, generally by changing one of them, thereby achievingconsistency. Hochschild, concurring with Festinger, proposes that this also appliesto emotion:

A principle of emotive dissonance, analogous to the principle of cognitive dissonance,

is at work. Maintaining a difference between feeling and feigning over the long run

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leads to strain. We try to reduce this strain by pulling the two closer together either by

changing what we feel or changing what we feign. (Hochschild, 2003[1983]: 90)

I propose that dissonance is active in processes of staying and processes ofleaving, which will be illustrated in the analysis. However, I will not distinguishbetween cognitive and emotive aspects of this phenomenon since I view them asinterwoven and separable only at the theoretical level.

Hochschild makes a distinction between emotion work and emotional labour:the former relates to the private and the latter to the public sphere, where emotionsmay be managed to sell a product, or the managed emotions may be the productitself. Thus, the art of managing emotion may be public or private and more or lesssituational. But, as Hochschild underlines:

(Yet) the achievements of the heart are all the more remarkable within roles that last

longer and go deeper. Parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and best

friends expect to have more freedom from feeling rules and less need for emotion

work; in reality however, the subterranean work of placing an acceptable inner face on

ambivalence is actually more crucial for them. In fact, the deeper the bond, the more

emotion work, and the more unconscious we are of it. (Hochschild, 2003[1983]: 68)

While Hochschild’s focus is primarily on emotional labour, my focus is solely onemotion work. Private emotion work within the bonds of intimate relationships is,however, a difficult object of study, mainly due to two circumstances. First, asHochschild points out, this work is not consciously noticed and may thereforebe hard to discern (for both informant and researcher). Second, that retrospectiveinterviewing itself may be part of emotion work and contain its own feeling rules.The feelings the informants describe may be interwoven with the feelings they thinkthey are expected to describe. This poses a delicate dilemma for the researcher andrequires a critical eye in the reader (cf. Frith and Kitzinger, 1998).

Results

Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde waspublished in 1886 and was a major success (Stevenson, 2003[1886]). The story ofthe well-reputed Dr. Jekyll, occasionally transformed into the vile and violent Mr.Hyde, has since been reprinted numerous times and portrayed in several differentways on the stage and in films. ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ has become a metaphor todescribe a duality of, or a transformation from, good to bad. It has been notedthat this metaphor is commonly used by abused women when describing the abu-sers (e.g. Enander, 2010; Goetting, 1999; Zink et al., 2006). In the following, I willillustrate a process in which women’s conceptualizations of their abusers shiftsfrom good to bad: or from Jekyll to Hyde. First I will present a more overarchingprocess, illustrated by two empirical cases, then I will exemplify parts of this pro-cess more in detail.

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From exclusively Jekyll to Hyde as well: Shifting conceptualizationsand emotion work

Kind, warm, considerate, charming, humorous, empathic and exciting were wordscommonly used by the informants to describe the man they first met. The descriptionof having been ‘seen’ by this man, in the sense of being perceived and appreciated justas one ‘is’, was also recurrent. It is a goodman the informants describe falling in lovewith, and this initially encountered good person is perceived not just as the original,but also as the genuineman for a long time (c.f. Jeffner, 1998). In accordance with theJekyll/Hydemetaphor, informants talked about falling in love with Jekyll, notHyde,and that the duality of the abuser only became apparent later. As Malin put it:

I mean, it’s not like you meet a violent man and say ‘Yes, now everything’ll be won-

derful!’. You meet a wonderful man who turns out to be something entirely different

later. (Malin (II),1 second interview)

However, after inflicting painful experiences of psychological, physical and/orsexual abuse, the perpetrator was perceived as ‘‘two people’’– or Jekyll and Hyde –in recurrent descriptions (c.f. Enander, 2010; Goetting, 1999; Zink et al., 2006). Anexample from Erika (I):

Cause he’s like two people, this man, the most proper, kind, sweet, and oh, so charm-

ing fellow. He’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde . . .Amazing, completely different people, you

can’t even imagine how they can wear the same clothes. (first interview)

Informants described confusion, inability to reconcile the differences and self-blame as a consequence of the introduction of Hyde alongside the good Jekyll:

You end up feeling you’re crazy, like. Because he’s so kind and sweet, on the one

hand, and then all of a sudden he can change into someone completely different. At

last you almost go bonkers yourself, or something like that, don’t you? Because you

wonder: ‘How can such a nice, kind bloke turn into someone like that? Well, perhaps

it’s because of me then.’ (Malin (II), second interview)

In the extract from Malin above, she expresses feelings of incomprehension onthe basis of the assumption that her abuser was, essentially, ‘a nice, kind bloke’.Like Malin, informants perceived the ‘good part’ as more genuine than the bad,which is no wonder since it was this good man they first encountered and got toknow. However, when violence and degradation continued, the conceptualizationof the man as basically caring and good ‘didn’t add up’, as phrased by Elisabeth,with his behaviour:

It didn’t add up. How he . . . If he now says he loves me so much and at the same time

does like this . . . (I, first interview)

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When bad turns to worse, ‘Hyde’ eventually takes precedence over ‘Jekyll’; atsome point, which may vary greatly, women’s conceptualizations of their abusersshift from good to bad. I am not suggesting that this is a clear and linear process.Women make distinctions of different kinds, such as between the person and theact, in their conceptualizations of their abusive partners. However, in the interviewsI have analysed, women’s conceptualizations of their abusers did tend to shift‘‘from Jekyll to Hyde’’. The time-point at which such a shift occurs is probablyrelated to a multitude of external and internal factors. Interestingly, these shiftingconceptualizations were described by some informants as connected to leaving:

I didn’t choose him when he was bad, did I? No, I felt that I fell in love with him for

his good sides. And in the beginning, the good sides outweighed the bad all the time

but then the bad sides took over more and more and there was less good left . . . and

then it was easier to get out, you know. (Jenny (II), first interview)

Active emotion work is discernible in these shifting conceptualizations. Initially,when the abuser is still perceived as mainly good, informants seem to tackle beinghurt, scared or disappointed by focusing on his good aspects, as exemplified by hiscaring, considerate and repentant behaviours; that is, they try to align their feelingswith the conceptualization of being in a loving relationship with a basically goodpartner. More degradation and violence bring increasing dissonance that makesthis conceptualization untenable. When the abuser is finally conceptualized as morebad than good, opposing emotion work is visible in informants’ descriptions. Thus,with shifting conceptualizations, from good to bad, efforts are made to turn emo-tions from warm to cold.

The cases of Liljana (I) and Lena (II) are presented as an illustration of myanalysis.

Liljana. Liljana, a mother of two who described herself as having fought hardfor her family, recounted that she experienced the first three years of the relation-ship with her ex-husband as happy. But after that, said Liljana, he ‘changed alot’: he started to hang out with friends, stayed away from home longer periodsof time and battered her. Liljana described being shattered by this and she reportedthe abuse to the police a number of times. Yet she did not, apparently, initiallywant to completely lose trust in her husband. She described him as convincingand manipulative, and said that she also wanted to believe him, for example,when he stated that he had renounced violence for ever. Thus, the first timepolice reports resulted in a trial Liljana, not wanting to harm her husband, tookback her accusation of abuse, believing that he would never abuse her again. Butshe also recounted:

Do you know what occurred to me at that trial? I’ll be honest. The thought hit me, just

at the end. It had been going on for three or four hours and it hit me, ‘What if he does

it again, and here you are, lying?’ That just occurred to me . . .Then there was the

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second part, ‘No, he won’t. We’ll go get some help. There’s family counselling and

that sort of thing’. I was wrong [whispers]. (first interview)

As I see it, Liljana still predominantly conceptualized her ex-husband as ‘Jekyll’,i.e. good and trustworthy, at the time of this trial. However, his hurtful behaviourseems to have created a dissonance that suddenly resonated at the end of the trial.However, the dissonance, as I interpret it, was not strong enough at this point tolead to a reconceptualization of the abuser yielding the interpretation that hewould, most probably, be violent again. Instead, Liljana sought to resolve thedissonance by enforcing her hope that her husband would indeed stop his violence,with help if necessary. Retrospectively – and in a whisper – Liljana acknowledgedthat she had been wrong. She discussed, too, why she wanted to believe in her ex-husband’s recurrent assurances that he would not hit her again:

I can’t completely explain why you want to believe him. First, you have to be 100

percent brainwashed into believing you can’t manage living without him. You can’t do

anything without him. You can’t go to the loo without him. You can’t live without

him. You have no future without him. You’re meant to be scared when he just shows

his face, and not talk about when he hits you. You’re to have that fear 99 percent,

24 hours a day. I call that brainwashing. And you still think up things like that. You

feel sorry, not for yourself, you feel sorry for him the whole time. How’ll he manage if

I leave him? How will he do the laundry, how will he cook, how will he . . . ? And the

third part is about that you’ve been happy with this man at some point in your life.

You had a great relationship. I had a great relationship that most people just dream

about. So it’s difficult for me to understand that it’s that man. And that’s why it went

so far. That’s why it took time until I realized that he’d changed 100 percent. I kept

trying to find the man I’d met in 1994. But I couldn’t. I was fooling myself. (first

interview)

In the quote above, Liljana brings up several effects of abuse described in earlierresearch; e.g. being ‘brainwashed’ (e.g. Mega et al., 2000) or subjected to ‘distortionof subjective reality’ (Kirkwood, 1993), internalizing violence (Lempert, 1996,Lundgren, 2004) and developing emotional ties of fear, compassion and hope(Enander and Holmberg, 2008; Holmberg and Enander, 2004). But emotionwork is also discernible. ‘I kept trying to find this man I met in 1994’, saidLiljana, which can be interpreted as her trying to counter the dissonance createdby abuse with active emotion work; the man she met in 1994 was perceived asgood and loving and worth living with. I would call trying to ‘find’ him ‘emotionwork towards Jekyll’, that is, towards conceptualizations of the abuser asbasically good.

More specifically, I would argue that Liljana describes an attempt at whatHochschild calls deep acting: when faced by violence she does not try to feignpositive feelings for the man to counter dissonance, as in surface acting, but toevoke them through finding their source. Cognitive sociologist Morris Rosenberg

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(2006[1991]) describes how such emotional management is actually achieved withcognitive means. It is through different modes of selective attention, perspectivalselectivity and selective interpretation that we manage our emotions, claimsRosenberg. He thus points to how very complex the emotion–cognition relation-ship is.

Liljana’s emotion work toward Jekyll seems to have been successful up to apoint; Liljana stated that ‘that last bit in my heart, a little bit of love left there’ wasone reason she kept hoping for change. However, she was eventually subjected tovery serious violence by her husband, who took her to a desolate place where henearly killed her and probably – though not expressed explicitly in the interview –also raped her. I presume that this horrific event led to her finally changing con-ceptualizations – and losing hope. In earlier research, losing hope has been foundto be an important part of leaving (Enander and Holmberg, 2008; Ferraro andJohnson, 1983; Holmberg and Enander, 2004; Hyden, 1994; Landenburger, 1989;NiCarthy, 1987), and it was indeed after this event that Liljana left.

Lena. Lena, who had married a man she thought she would live with for the rest ofher life, shifted conceptualizations of her husband almost immediately after vio-lence entered the relationship; at least that was how she described it retrospectively.Lena recounted that the first time she was physically abused – late in pregnancy –she was utterly shocked, and understood that she had ‘drawn the short straw’ in herchoice of husband, but saw no way out of the relationship due to the expectedchild. The second time her husband beat her she urged him to seek professionalhelp to change his behaviour and decided – privately – that she would leave if ithappened a third time. And the third time she did indeed leave. This is her descrip-tion of what happened to her emotionally with the onset of violence:

And I guess that’s what I felt when he had beaten me the first time, then you

know . . . even though . . .well, it’s hard to say but the love, I mean my . . . love is based

on trust and my trust disappeared, you know. And so did lo . . . true love. The other

thing was, you know, more of . . .well . . . a formality to do with our son having a mum

and a dad . . .But when something breaks, it breaks. It’s not as easy as it just . . .well . . . -

being there just like before. It was completely . . . for me it was a completely different

world from one day to the next I was living in different worlds. (second interview)

Emotionally, something ‘broke’, said Lena, which I interpret as also leading toshifting conceptualizations of her whole living situation to ‘a completely differentworld’ (c.f. Mellberg, 2002). When Lena was asked about her situation betweenthese three abusive events – that is, from the first to the third and leaving – shereplied:

Well . . .well, now that I look back on it it was just like trying to keep up appearances

and . . . it was very important that no one should find out, you know. So it . . . I think it

was [inaudible], that everything should look all right, you’re to . . . try to look happy

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and . . . try to pretend that everything was all right. And you felt horrible . . . horrible

inside. (first interview)

Keeping up appearances while feeling horrible inside is an everyday way ofdescribing what Hochschild calls surface acting. Lena describes trying to lookhappy rather than trying to be happy, which would entail deep acting. In a totallychanged world, Lena appears to have managed surface acting, but not deep actingactually affecting her emotions. For her, it seems, the dissonance was too large.

We will continue with Lena, because she unfortunately experienced – and left –two abusive relationships. However, they differed, in her description, leading todifferent kinds of conceptualizations of the abuser and to different emotionaleffects, as I interpret it. While Lena’s husband was physically and sexually abusivein a way she described as ‘explosive’, the partner she met approximately ten yearslater was not physically or sexually violent, but psychologically abusive. Lenadescribed being controlled and threatened to death by this man, and stalkedafter leaving him. Comparing this to the violence she experienced from her ex-husband she concluded that:

I guess his way of terrorizing me was more intelligent because it went much deeper. It

scared me much, much more than physical violence or sexual violence did. Because

that had a beginning and an end, didn’t it, but this didn’t. No, this terrorizing was

there all the time, the fear was there all the time, wasn’t it? (second interview)

Apart from creating a more pervasive fear, the psychological abuse Lena suf-fered from her ex-partner may have differed from the physical and sexual abuse shehad suffered from her ex-husband in another way. Although the psychologicalabuse was ‘there all the time’, it may have been less tangible than physically andsexually violent acts that had ‘a beginning and an end’, thus also less likely tonoticeably collide with former conceptualizations and lead to undeniable disso-nance. Actually, while Lena managed an almost immediate breakup from her hus-band, this was not the case with the psychologically abusive partner. She describedleaving the latter because of ‘pure exhaustion’ (second interview), when she wasworn out and down and seems to have, as described in earlier research, ‘hit rockbottom’ (see Enander and Holmberg, 2008; Holmberg and Enander, 2004; Ferraroand Johnson, 1983; NiCarthy, 1987).

Comparing Lena’s accounts of the two violent relationships she was involved in,I would argue that the blatant physical violence that Lena was subjected to by herhusband, and which she describes as very surprising and shocking, was stronglyand clearly dissonant with perceptions of the man as caring and good. The moregradually increasing psychological control and intimidation she was subjected to bythe other man may, however, not have protruded in equally stark and obviouscontrast to positive perceptions of the abuser. In the first case Lena left as soon asshe had the means to. In the second case it was a long and painful process, as Lenadescribes it, to extricate herself from the relationship. Although there may of course

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be other factors involved here, I suggest that the different kinds of violence Lenawas subjected to mattered. In the first case the shocking experience of suddenphysical violence would have led to an immediate dissonance, and Lena leftalmost immediately. In the second case the violence was less sudden and not phys-ical; the dissonance would have been less immediate, as was Lena’s decision toleave. This leads to the interpretation that dissonance is significant to leaving.

Dissonance exemplified

I have proposed that the onset of violence leads to a dissonance that increases withmore violence and that may lead to changed conceptualizations of the abuser/relationships. Some specific examples that support this are called for at thispoint. Below, Cecilia (II) describes primarily emotive (aspects of) dissonance that– as she expresses it – ‘did not reach her brain’:

when we, like, were getting along, it was fantastic, wasn’t it, like I told you. Everything

was so incredibly good. But I always had a knot in my stomach because I didn’t know

when or where I would do something wrong so that things would go bad. It was like

walking in a minefield all the time. I never knew when he would explode. When I got

home, when I’d been in school or whatever, I got to the bus stop and would think ‘Oh,

how lovely, the sun’s shining and I feel marvellous and the weather is brilliant’ and as

I got closer I got that knot in my stomach. And when I finally was outside our house,

‘I wonder what mood he’s in today’ . . . then it was like . . .No. My whole body felt like

I wasn’t happy. And it was just that we didn’t reach . . . it didn’t reach my brain fast

enough. (first interview)

Cecilia was obviously experiencing discomfort: as she expressed it, her body feltthat she was not happy. Thus the dissonance was there, but not fully acknowledgedin the sense that she let it affect how she perceived the relationship; it did not ‘reachher brain’. According to my interpretation and analysis, Cecilia letting the disso-nance reach her brain would imply that she would change her conceptualizations ofthe abuser and/or the relationship.

The two quotes from Rebecka (I) chosen to illustrate dissonance end with thesame declaration: ‘it didn’t work’:

Every time he was that nice I could talk to him, he understood, he really got it. But

when he was aggressive, you couldn’t say a word. Even if you just said ‘Hello’, you

could practically be thrown out of the house. So it was very strange for me since I got

to the point where I didn’t know where I stood or what I felt, or, I didn’t know

anything. Half of me knew what it wanted and the other half said absolutely not.

I mean, 50-50 and then I have to fight with myself. It didn’t work. (first interview)

No, part of me wanted to stay because I was trying to see that good part of him

that he had all the same. And trying to get rid of that other part. But it didn’t work.

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Cause I was suffering from it the whole time. And I tried to serve dinner when he got

home, you know, to do everything as perfectly as possible. And to try to stop these

rows and all. But it didn’t work. (first interview)

As indicated by the first quote, it was ‘fighting with herself’ that did not work forRebecka; i.e. having a dissonant cognitive and emotive comprehension of the sit-uation, according to my interpretation. Previous research has described internali-zation and adopting the abuser’s worldview as effects of abuse (e.g. Graham et al.,1994; Lempert, 1996; Lundgren, 2004). Rebecka was one of the informants whomost vividly described what could be understood as internalization; she talkedabout becoming ‘strapped into the other person who is a person instead of you’(first interview). However, as noted elsewhere (Holmberg and Enander, 2004), thisinternalization is not complete but leads instead to a split – or dissonant – sense ofreality.

In the second quote from Rebecka, what did not work was the attempt to seethe good part of the abuser and get rid of the other. This can be read as anattempt at reducing dissonance by deep acting. Hochschild describes two ways ofmanaging emotion through deep acting: by ‘directly exhorting feeling’ and by‘making indirect use of a trained imagination’. Rebecka had previously describedthe latter kind of deep acting: picturing to herself how in need of love herdepressed partner must be and how he was suffering; here, she also touches onthe former kind. By trying to get rid of the bad part of the abuser, she alsoattempted to get rid of her negative feelings. However, this did not work; thedissonance was not resolved, probably because of something else that did notwork according to Rebecka; putting an end to ‘the rows’ or, in other words, toher partner’s violence. What eventually did not work, then, was staying in therelationship.

Emotion work toward Hyde

What remains to be illustrated, in the process suggested above, is what wasdescribed as ‘opposing’ emotion work, meaning emotion work toward Hyde andaway from Jekyll following shifting conceptualizations of the abuser. This emotionwork emerged most visibly in accounts of post-leaving experiences. Below is anexample from an interview with Eva (II):

I must say that I don’t think I’ve ever had such a good relationship as when he finally

moved out and started to sort of come round and date me a bit again and we were

almost back in the old days and I felt all the warning signs there are, didn’t I, I mean

my God, it’s . . . It’s so easy to slide . . .’ cause he was so nice it was unbelievable, you

know. And he was going to stop drinking and ‘this is OK with me’, you know, to

prove to me somehow that ‘we can start up from the beginning again’ and . . . it was a

bit scary, actually. I thought, I’ve really got to talk to myself, so I don’t start sliding

into that. (first interview)

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When Eva’s ex-husband, shortly after the separation, displayed kindnessand an interest in reuniting, she felt a need to ‘really talk to herself’ not to ‘slide’into the relationship again. Deep acting by directly exhorting feeling seems tobe a method Eva employed to maintain the separation and not re-enter therelationship.

Agnes (II) described not using mental energy to think about the abuser’s goodsides, because she found it pointless. This was also connected to her not wantingcontact with him:

And then in hindsight it’s not productive for me to add the nice side to my image of

that bastard. Because it’s . . . it’s meaningless to me’. Cause he isn’t a person I want to

spend time with. So I’ve chosen to focus on one part of his personality. (second

interview)

Retrospectively, Agnes saw no need to focus on positive aspects of the abuser.And by deep acting she seems to have managed to avoid this; this interpretation isbased on a comment she made concerning the first interview, when interviewed thesecond time:

I think that the hardest part . . . of the last interview was . . . having to think about how

I felt about him from the very beginning. Because . . . it’s difficult somehow. I know

what he did to me, you know, but having to think that he was a person I had started

seeing, who seemed to be a certain way at first. It was quite difficult to try to think . . .

about him that way and describe him that way.

By bringing up positive memories and earlier conceptualizations of the abuser,Agnes was also reminded of feelings that she had (emotion) worked her way out of.In this case it is difficult to discern by which kind of deep acting she had achievedthis, exhortation or indirect imagination; perhaps both.

In summary, I have presented a process in which women’s conceptualizations oftheir abusers shift from good to bad, and emotion work in connection to thesereconceptualizations has been illustrated. The cognitive/emotive dissonance createdin their victims by abusive men’s use of violence has also been illustrated, anddescribed as playing a crucial role in this process.

Discussion

Two questions were asked in the introduction: What kind of emotion work isdiscernible in the informant’s accounts of living with and leaving abusive men?and How is emotion work connected to leaving? Starting with the first question,two kinds of emotion work have been illustrated: emotion work toward ‘Jekyll’ andemotion work toward ‘Hyde’. In the first case, informants try to align their feelingswith conceptualizations of their abusers as basically good and worth living with; inthe second case the tables are turned and informants struggle to not feel ‘good’

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feelings for partners/ex-partners that they have decided are basically bad and notworth living with. From this we can conclude that emotion work can supportprocesses of staying as well as processes of leaving. How, then, are emotionwork, dissonance and shifting conceptualizations connected to leaving?

As described in the literature review, a ‘cognitive shift’ is described in severalleaving process studies (Anderson and Saunders, 2003; Ferraro and Johnson, 1983;Goetting, 1999; Khaw and Hardesty, 2007; Landenburger, 1989; Patzel, 2001;Rosen and Stith, 1997). This cognitive shift was gradual, but brought about bycatalysts such as increased level of violence, fewer good periods, or negative impactof the violence on the children (Anderson and Saunders, 2003). This study suggeststhat such catalysts will be in contrast to positive conceptualizations of the abuserand create emotive–cognitive dissonance. The cognitive shift described in previousresearch is further, I would argue, equal to a shift in conceptualizations of theabuser from Jekyll to Hyde.

When will this shift then occur? On the basis of this study the logical answer is;when dissonance is too large to be able to counter with emotion work towardJekyll. A turning point in the process of leaving is repeatedly mentioned in theliterature (Enander and Holmberg, 2008; Haj-Yahia and Eldar-Avidan, 2001;Kearney, 2001; Landenburger, 1989; Patzel, 2001; Rosen and Stith, 1997), and isat times equated with the aforementioned cognitive shift. Perhaps it is at the turn-ing point that Hyde simply becomes undeniable.

However, I would argue, this is not equal to – as suggested in previous literature– redefining the whole relationship as abusive and labelling oneself victimized.Conceiving that one’s relationship or male partner is ‘bad’ is not the same thingas spelling out the concepts of violence, perpetrator and victim. From my previousresearch (Enander and Holmberg, 2008) I suggest that a more profound redefini-tion of the relationship is a separate process; mainly occurring after the turningpoint/break up.

Several researchers have described leaving as a process occurring in differentstages or phases (Burke et al., 2001; Cluss, et al., 2006; Enander and Holmberg,2008; Khaw and Hardesty, 2007; Landenburger, 1989; Merrit-Gray and Wuest,1995; Moss et al., 1997; Pilkington, 2000; Wuest and Merrit-Gray, 1999). However,the beginning and endpoint of this process and the number of defined stages varyconsiderably. Regardless of the number of stages included in these different models,it is, however, more probable that emotion work toward Jekyll, which upholdsstaying rather than leaving, will be dominant in earlier stages of the leaving process,while the emotion work towards Hyde will be more evident in latter stages, sup-porting or upholding a decision to leave.

This study fills a gap in the literature, because an explicit focus on batteredwomen’s emotion work in relation to leaving processes has been lacking in previousresearch. More research along these lines is warranted. Emotion work is furthercentred on feeling rules that remain to be described. What feeling rules may beinvolved in processes of staying and processes of leaving? When may these emotionrules support women’s right to physical and psychological integrity and their right

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to live without violence, and when may they serve as an obstacle? These are impor-tant questions for further research.

Moreover, the issue of which discourses nourish such feeling rules is a relevantsubject for further analysis. Several authors have pointed to constructions of mas-culinity and femininity and notions of romantic love that may serve to maintainwomen in abusive relationships (Bochorowitz and Eisikovits, 2002; Boonzaier andde La Rey, 2003; Jackson, 2001; Towns and Adams, 2000). Classical romantic nar-ratives urge the beauty to love the beast and kiss the frog, because these apparitionsonly hide the wonderful prince or good man within. It is in line with these narrativesthat the good Jekyll may be interpreted as more genuine than the bad Hyde, andemotion work towards Jekyll, and staying, will seem reasonable. Connecting dis-courses and feeling rules is a future analytical task, and creating counter discourses tonotions of women’s love as the remedy to men’s violence is an urgent political task.

Another task for research, policy and practice is to analyse and challenge prac-tices in which victimized women are urged to undertake emotion work towardsJekyll rather than towards Hyde. In the Nordic countries, shared parenthood withan ex-partner, violent or not, has become the norm and several researchers havehighlighted the dangers this may impose on abused women and their children (e.g.Eriksson et al., 2005). Sociologist Maria Eriksson (2003) has described how a gap isconstrued between ‘fathers’ and ‘violent men’ in Swedish policy and practice con-cerning custody and contact. Thus, a violent man/father can still be regarded as agood parent with whom the woman/mother should cooperate. Policy and practiceconcerning custody and contact may thus contribute to women feeling impelled toperceive the man as Jekyll rather than Hyde. Possibly this can prolong women’sdisentanglement from abusive relationships and needs to be challenged.

Finally, a major contribution of this study is its emphasis on how emotion workgoes hand in hand with women’s shifting conceptualizations of their abusers, shiftsbrought about by additional experiences of abuse. I have also claimed that victim-ized women use emotion work to counter dissonance, by either strengthening or byweakening positive feelings for the abusers. These suggestions need to be confirmedby further research. But lay and professional support providers may well ponderwhat an awareness of emotion work as an active ‘dissonance manager’ can bring topractical work with battered women. How can we empower women so they may‘listen’ to dissonance that speaks of violence without resorting to emotion workthat trivializes it?

Note

1. Roman numeral I or II in parenthesis indicates informant group.

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