Terrible news article

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13265300

Violence Against Women and The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Violence Against Women and The Gravedigger’s Daughter

She heard them. The floorboards vibrated with their struggle. Her father’s excited, eager voice and her mother’s short breathless cries, that sound that Rebecca would later realize was Anna Schwart pleading for her life...There came a deafening noise...On the floor by the bed was a shape, a sprawled motionless shape that might have been a body but Rebecca could not see the head...

Her father Jacob Schwart was speaking to her. His face and the front of his work clothes were splattered with the dark liquid...He was trying in that tight space, to maneuver the gun barrels around, to take aim at her. Yet Pa seemed not to wish to touch her, to jostle her bodily. Not for a long time had Pa touched his daughter. Instead he backed away. But the edge of the bed prevented him from moving far. He was saying, ‘You--you are born here. They will not hurt you.’ He had changed his mind about her, then.

He was aiming the barrels at his own head, clumsily at his jaws out-thrust like a turtle’s. For there was a second shell remaining to be discharged. He was sweating and panting as if he’d been running uphill. He set his jaws tight, he clenched his stained teeth. The last look Jacob Schwart would give his daughter was one of indignation, reproach, as he fumbled to pull the trigger. ‘Pa, no--’ Again the blast was deafening. The windowpanes behind Jacob Schwart would be shattered. In that instant father and daughter were one, obliterated...She was thirteen years old, a minor. She would be a ward of Chautauqua County until the age of eighteen. (Oates 186)

Violence against women, as seen in The Gravedigger’s Daughter is a serious violation of human rights. Domestic violence [which frequently involves sexual assault] causes long-term suffering to victimized women, and has a destructive impact on a productive life. It also has a negative effect on gender equality, and is an obstacle to development (Vung 181). In serious situations, it is life endangering. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, Article 3 states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Furthermore Article 5 states that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Humphrey 1). Joyce Carol Oates portrays the life of Rebecca in The Gravedigger’s Daughter and her experiences with victimization by her father, husband, and even her siblings based off of her own grandmother’s life.

Rebecca from The Gravedigger’s Daughter grew up with a violent father in a very unhealthy household. He was physically and psychologically abusive. “Rebecca knew not to ask their father anything, none of them dared approach Pa in any way likely to set him off” (73). Her brother Herschel also sexually abused Rebecca. “Herschel would...grin and tickle her roughly...between her legs to make her squeal and kick” (69). She finally escaped the torture that was her household, only to enter into an abusive marriage with Niles Tignor. “He had married her in a ‘civil ceremony’ in Niagara Falls. She’d been seventeen at the time. Somewhere, lost amid his things was the Certificate of Marriage” (36). She later realized that he had deceived her into believing they were married.

Everything was great in the beginning. Rebecca wrote her friends, “I miss you! I am very happy as a married woman, Tignor & I travel all the time on business staying in the best hotels...I am hoping to have a baby” (276). “Rebecca believed that her love would endure for a lifetime, always she would be grateful to him. He had not needed to marry her, she knew. He might have tossed her away like a used tissue, for perhaps that was what she deserved...Without Tignor’s weight holding her fixed, fast, she would be broken and scattered like dried leaves blown by the wind” (278). Rebecca got her wish and became pregnant. Sadly, Tignor, angry at his wife for talking personally about him to a maid at a hotel, beat his pregnant wife into miscarriage. “The next one, you can keep,” he said (289). The day before they were married Rebecca physically attacked Tignor, angry with his lack of commitment:

Tignor grabbed her by her thick long hair, shut his fist in her hair and slammed

her against the passenger’s door so hard, her head against the window, she

must have lost consciousness for a moment. He hoped to hell he had not

cracked the window. By this time, men had followed them out into the parking lot,

to see what was happening. Yet even now, no one would intervene...This was

between Tignor and the girl. You had to suppose there was a purpose to

whatever Tignor had to do in such circumstances, and justice (265).

That was the last time she participated physically outside of defense. Tignor believed she deserved the punishment, and Rebecca also thought she deserved it.

“A growing number of studies have found that dysfunctional couples, violent spouses, and negligent or abusive parents perceive their spouses’ or children’s behavior as intentional and blame their own aggression on the behavior of the victim rather than the situation...When a man who hits his spouse blames her because she provoked him on purpose, this attribution of intent is based on a certain conception of women” (Fortin 384). Men’s inability to control their own anger feeds the lack of gender equality in society (Howe 67).

In “The War Against Women”, a widespread media coverage of men’s violence from Victoria, Australia, it is acknowledged “...tired, old misogynist stereotypes are invoked to explain men’s violence. The most standard one--men lose control because women provoke them” (66). Furthermore, “...this epidemic will not be brought under control until a basic truth about it is acknowledged by the whole community: that men who beat the women they live with are committing crimes” (62). There is no justification for this behavior, no matter what the situation is. Men are solely responsible for their violence. The divergence between public and professional opinion emphasizes widespread ignorance and confusion about the cause of male violence in society (67). “Many women trapped in families by male violence are constantly in fear of how far the violence will go. Often it goes as far as death” (61). Rebecca vowed to “never say no to [Tignor]” (Oates 274).

[She] read in the Chautauqua Falls newspaper...a local man who’d murdered his

wife, beat her and threw her into the canal...and threw rocks at her until she

drowned...It had taken maybe ten minutes, the man told police. He had not

boasted but he had not been ashamed, either. [She] was tryin’ to leave me, he

said. Wanting to take my son...The worst thing was, every guy who read it,

including Niles Tignor, shook his head made a sniggering noise with his

mouth...‘You make your bed, now lay in it’. That’s what Tignor said. (6)

“Despite the feminist revolution of the past two decades, many people in our society still believe relationships between men and women do not need to be between equals, that power can still be male prerogative, the women essentially have to be submissive” (Howe 69). Some justifications for violence from a study in Greenland were that many men beat to show the woman that they are stronger, to be in control, intimidating, and right (Sorensen 843). Women often feel paralyzed in fear, and do not speak up, putting themselves and their children in danger.

Tignor, out of unprovoked insecure jealousy, wrongly accused Rebecca of being with another man.

[He] grabbed her hair, shut his fist in her hair and shook her, not so hard as he might have but gently, reprovingly, as you might shake a recalcitrant child. ‘You tell me Gypsy-girl. We got all night’...On the assembly line [at work] it was observed that her face was swollen, sullen. When she removed her plastic-rimmed sunglasses of the cheap cheery kind sold in drugstores and replaced them with her safety goggles it was observed that her left eye was swollen and discolored. [Her friend] nudged her, spoke in her ear-- ‘Oh honey, he’s back? Is that it?’--she had nothing to say. (Oates 313)

The jealousy did not stop there. In jealous rages Tignor said very nasty things to his wife, all while in front of their child. He always turned violent following the onset of jealousy.

There came a sudden explosion of light at the side of her head. Suddenly she

was on the floor, dazed. Something had stuck the side of her head. She had no

clear idea that it had been a man’s fist or that the man who’d stuck her was

Tignor...So very angry now, and she had no idea why. For she had not fought

him, she had tried not to provoke him. Yet he was shutting his hands around her

neck, just to frighten her. Teach her a lesson...Thumping the back of her head

against the floorboards. Rebecca was choking, losing consciousness...Even in

her terror she was thinking he must stop soon, of course he would stop soon, he

had never gone on so long, never seriously hurt her in the past...She struggled to

save herself, panic flooded her veins...Rebecca would have slipped down like a

rag doll except the man held her, striking her face...Tignor threw her onto the bed,

he fumbled at his trousers...[the child], pulling at Daddy’s legs, screaming for him

to stop...A bright blood-blossom on the child’s mouth, nose...Tignor lifted the

screaming child by an arm, and threw him at the wall. Niley ceased crying. He lay

quietly on the floor, where he’d fallen. And Rebecca, on the bed lay quietly now ...Tignor had lost interest, now she’d ceased to fight him. He’d collapsed

on the bed beside her. Amid the churned-up bloodied bedclothes he would

sleep...Rebecca kept losing consciousness, then waking. A very long time

seemed to pass before she had the strength to wake fully, and get to her feet.

(328-330)

Rebecca and Niley survived that day. They took Tignor’s car while he slept that night, and escaped to a bus station. They spent many years on the run, never staying in any place too long. They changed their names and identities to Hazel and Zack Jones, and lived their lives in fearful hiding. She even denied her true identity when running into her brother, whom she had not seen since before their parents died. She would eventually remarry a man named Chester Gallagher. He was a wealthy man that treated her well, and took in Zack as his own child. She didn’t feel the passion she had felt with Tignor, but she knew she had to love him because he was so good to her. “You must love this man. You have no choice” (427). Rebecca has very little self worth at this point in her life. She feels it would be “a mistake, loving [her]. It would be a terrible mistake to marry her” (458).

They thought they saw Tignor on several paranoid occasions. “Zack was left shaken, frightened by these encounters. For he knew that any one of them might be he, him. And that he and Mommy would be punished for whatever it was they’d done, he would never forgive” (389). When Zack was frightened by a look-alike, he waited for his mother to protect him. “You missed him! You never saw him! I saw him! He could walk right up to you and blam! blam! blam! shoot you in the face and blam! he’d shoot me and you couldn’t stop him! I hate you” (390). Years after leaving the horror of life with Tignor behind, the memories still haunted Rebecca. The fear and paranoia of Tignor discovering their whereabouts followed them into their new lives.

Violence against women is a serious issue. In a study in Vietnam in 2008, 31% of women in a rural area had experienced physical violence in their lifetime, while 8% reported it just in the past year. The corresponding figures for sexual violence were 7% and 2%. Among the women victimized by their spouses, 6% needed hospital care and 52% reported bruising lasting several days (Vung 178). The Gravedigger’s Daughter is set in the 50’s, but violence against women knows no setting. It still occurs today, and knows no time frame in history. It knows no socioeconomic class, or race or background. It occurs in third world countries, as well as in Hollywood. We are all very familiar with the recent domestic violence dispute between pop superstar Rihanna and Chris Brown. And the highly publisized O.J. Simpson trial. It happens all over the world.

“Many women, especially feminists, believe that attacks on women--by strangers or partners--are the responsibility of all men: that all men are capable of such behavior and indeed are complicit in it, even if they do not themselves behave that way. This is a view which achieves nothing apart from providing some women with an outlet for their understandable anger” (Howe 70). Obviously, not all men are violent. “Ma had put the fear of the Lord in her, years ago. ‘You would not want anything to happen to you, Rebecca! A girl by herself, men will follow. Even boys you know, you can’t trust’” (Oates 7). This is an extremist point of view which falsely assumes all men are predators. Teaching young naive girls awareness is a great way for young girls to recognize danger and the threat of danger.

A strange man who claimed to have a settlement for her had followed Rebecca in the start of the novel, or whom he thought she was, Hazel Jones. He gave her his card, and she escaped his presence quickly although he seemed harmless. She tried but failed to find him after leaving Tignor, and the curiosity stayed with her all of her adult life. It even inspired the new name she called herself in hiding. Later she read in a newspaper clipping, after the strange man’s death, that he was a murderer who believed her to be one of his first victims, Hazel Jones.

So that’s what he wanted with me: to murder me. It was a supreme joke. It was

the most fantastical revelation of her life. ‘Hazel Jones’: all along, from the first, a

dead girl. A murdered girl. A naive trusting girl who, when Byron Hendricks had

approached Rebecca Schwart on the towpath outside Chautauqua Falls, had

been dead for three years. Dead, decomposed! One of the female skeletons to

be one day unearthed on Byron Hendricks’s property” (517).

Six skeletons had been found on his property shortly after his death.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (Humphrey 1).  In President Obama's Human Rights Doctrine he prioritizes the one human right to live. This human right is his main focus in international relations. “It seems all too simple to state that dead people cannot exercise their rights...” (Etzioni 105).

The shocking reality and seriousness of domestic violence, and sexual assault is staggering. The stories of helplessness, victimization, and death at the hands of men are nothing short of a war. This war is a reality. In a study labeled “Greatest Risk of Violence Occurs at Home” in Australia, family killings accounted for 40% of homicides, and 25% of all homicides were marital killings (Howe 63-72). Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. And no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Humphrey 1). Violence against women is a serious violation of human rights.

Works Cited

Etzioni, Amitai. “Obama's Implicit Human Rights Doctrine.” Human Rights Review, v. 12

issue 1, 2011, p. 93-107.

Fortin, Andrée 1, Andr. “Establishing a Relationship Between Behavior and Cognition:

Violence Against Women and Children within the Family.” Journal of Family

Violence, v. 22 issue 6, 2007, p. 383-395.

Howe, Adrian. ““The War Against Women”: Media Representations of Men's Violence

Against Women in Australia.” Violence Against Women, v. 3 issue 1, 1997, p.

59-75.

Humphrey, John, Rene Cassin, P.C. Chang, Charles Malik, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

United Nations General Assembly. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Paris: , 1948. Web. 4 Mar 2011.

<http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml>.

Oates, Joyce Carol. The Gravedigger’s Daughter. P.S. New York, NY: HarperCollins

Publishers, 2007.

Sorensen, Bo. ““Men in Transition”: The Representation of Men's Violence Against

Women in Greenland.” Violence Against Women, v. 7 issue 7, 2001, p. 826-847.

Vung, Nguyen Dang. “Intimate partner violence against women in rural

Vietnam--different socio-demographic factors are associated with different forms

of violence: need for new intervention guidelines?.” BMC Public Health, 2008, p.

55-65.

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