Dragonslippers: This Is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like

By Dr Elżbieta Klimek-Dominiak

Lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic brought renewed public attention to the rise in the level of intimate partner violence (Peitzmeier et al., 2022). Scholars have already established in the 1970s that domestic violence is a gendered phenomenon and that it predominantly affects women (Walker, 1979). The World Health Organisation continues to identify violence against women (including intimate partner violence and sexual violence) as “a major public health problem and violation of women’s human rights” (WHO ”Violence Against Women”). WHO estimates that approximately 30% of women worldwide were affected by it and 27% of them experienced it in intimate relationships (WHO “Violence Against Women”). According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 41% of women and 26% of men experienced and reported violence by an intimate partner” (CDC Intimate Partner Violence). Violence against women is reflected in many cultural narratives such as comic books, which are particularly influential cultural forms. Mainstream superhero comics frequently visualize intimate partner violence in ways which reinforce domestic violence myths by minimizing the effects of violent acts, by assigning blame to the victimized character or by normalizing the perpetrator’s violent behaviour as an element of a specific model of masculinity (Garland et al., 2018). In contrast, many graphic life narratives undermine domestic violence myths by underscoring that this type of abuse often involves more than physical violence, that it is prevalent and that its effects are long-lasting.  Most graphic memoirs present experiences of domestic abuse from the perspective of minors. For example, Debbie Drechsler’s Daddy’s Girl, Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life and David Small’s Stitches explore the multiple effects of familial child abuse. Maria Stoian’s collection of graphic life stories Take it as a Compliment includes three adult stories of intimate partner violence (one about sexual harassment in the same-sex relationship, one heterosexual sexual assault by a man and one about a man abused by his ex-girlfriend) among predominant stories featuring stranger assaults of adolescents or young adults.

Rosalind B. Penfold’s Dragonslippers: This Is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like is one of the few full-length graphic memoirs about the adult experience of domestic violence. The story is presented from the perspective of an independent, successful and intelligent businesswoman who at first perceives her fast-paced relationship with a widower and father of four nice children as a fairy-tale romance. Brian, a pseudonym, showers Rosalind with attention, constantly expresses his admiration for her and proposes to her two months after they meet. When she shows reservations to a quick wedding because she is concerned that his children have not finished grieving their mother, to persuade her to marry him quickly, Brian hastily arranges a romantic weekend followed by a surprise pre-honeymoon holiday, which collides with her office deadline. Unexpectedly, just the day before they leave, Brian fires his children’s babysitter and points out with disdain that Rosalind’s mother “should be good for something” and should take care of his four children (Penfold 52), Rosalind ignores the demeaning remarks about her mother and agrees to remove these obstacles so as not to ruin his plan. During the holiday, Rosalind feels special and important to Brian except for one day when she engages in a conversation with another man about her work and Brian denigrates her in front of other people because of his delusional jealousy. Although she initially plans to leave Brian, he manages to convince her that he shoved and insulted her because she provoked him with her attractive appearance and that he just loves her passionately. He expresses his adoration for the rest of their stay, and she accepts his apology as she believes she also loves him deeply. Yet, despite Brian’s promises never to behave like this again, the tension in their marriage intensifies. Periods of marital bliss are followed by Brian’s increasingly inconsiderate, disrespectful, and possessive behaviour, which escalates into incidents of more intense violence. In addition, he isolates Rosalind from other people, even her friends and her family, and he insists that she subordinates her work and dreams to his plans and expectations. Rosalind becomes confused, blames herself and strives to please him, especially when abusive incidents are followed by the profuse expressions of his affection for her, apologies and reconciliation. Unable to make sense of the growing intensity, intermittent violence, and her husband’s manipulations making her question the reality of abuse, Rosalind starts drawing the terrifying scenes and hiding them. After numerous cycles of more life-threatening violence and despite her husband’s efforts to minimize it, Rosalind eventually faces the facts with the help of an external witness, her visual evidence comprising multiple drawings of the traumatizing scenes and support of her mother as well as her friends in her decision to leave her violent husband. But her attempts to separate from Brian emotionally, to stop returning to him, to prevent blaming herself and to regain self-respect often fail and she requires the help of a therapist.

Rosalind B. Penfold is a pseudonym which suggests that the author of this critically acclaimed graphic memoir might have been afraid of being judged for staying in an abusive relationship for a decade or feared that negative opinion might affect her family. People often ask “why didn’t she leave?” when they encounter stories of women victimized in intimate relationships for years, although they do not always ask for the reasons why the perpetrator abused the intimate partner for a long time. In her Preface, Penfold explains that the fear of negative response from relatives, friends and acquaintances is one of the reasons which made the decision to leave her abusive partner such a hard choice. Penfold’s memoir also evocatively shows other reasons why victims do not leave earlier. Apart from the fear of stigmatization, the victims may also want to protect children. In the case of Penfold, these were four children of her widower-partner, who she took care of for years and with whom she bonded. Yet another important obstacle to leaving, which Penfold acknowledges, is the common misconception that the victim can help the coercive partner change for the better just by surrendering unconditionally to the abuser and by continuously turning the other cheek. Dragonslippers powerfully demonstrates that staying in a relationship in the hope that the recurring promises of change materialize—while the abuse continues—is a trap. Penfold eventually realizes that daily life with her abuser normalizes domestic violence to the children witnessing it, poses a threat not only to her body but also her sanity and she decides to accept help of her mother and her friends to leave the dysfunctional marriage.

Her quickly sketched black-and-white drawings and the words in the speech or thought bubbles capture the dynamics of attachment and abuse in her relationship. The beginning of the memoir consists of impressionistic, pastoral images of a happy couple alone or playing with children. Eventually, it includes more portraits of Brian’s distorted features in acts of emotional, verbal, sexual or physical violence. These expressive deformations accompanying the abusive stage denote the shock and terror she, Brian’s children and their pet experienced. Penfold does not use a regular grid of panels to allow significant frames to stand out she also plays with scale to show the imbalance of power in the relationship and includes a series of drawn images which highlight confounding sequences of Brian’s impulsive and harmful actions and her obsessive attempts to excuse his behaviour. She also vividly represents psychological concepts and uses visual metaphors to convey her dreams, feelings and abstract ideas. She explains that she started this project in the form of a visual diary which she drew in the hope of understanding the cause of abuse. She externalized her confusion, self-doubt and pain by drawing the disturbing scenes from her marriage. After many years, her drawings helped her in the difficult process of recognizing her illusions about her relationship when she realized: “My brain could rationalize and deny, but my art went straight to the truth” (Penfold 11). When she was asked to publish them, she drew the connecting images, interactions, and her comments to construct a continuous life narrative, and paradoxically, she had to add the joyful scenes of the honeymoon periods to make the four phases in the cycle of violence understandable to readers—calm/honeymoon, tension, explosion/abusive incident, denial/reconciliation (Cote 257, DVCC “Dynamic of Domestic Violence”).

The most valuable aspects of Penfold’s memoir for graphic medicine lie in her persuasive visual-verbal interpretations of the psychological mechanisms at work in intimate partner violence. They are signalled in her Preface, where she explains that her “denial and shame” kept her in an abusive relationship for a decade, in the chapter titles, in the scenes drawn from her life and in her comments (Penfold 10). Most importantly, she acknowledges that she confused intensity with intimacy and that her fairy-tale love quickly turned into an addiction to an intense relationship. In her visual account of the crucial sessions, her therapist compares Rosalind’s relationship with Brian to a roller-coaster ride and explains that Rosalind’s body has been addicted to adrenaline-inducing, terrifying, and unpredictable events, which have been followed by apologies, reconciliation and a rewarding “honeymoon” phase. The therapist makes an analogy between such traumatic bonding and the shocking survival strategy, called Stockholm syndrome, when the hostage wants to please the captor so much and, in the process, she becomes so attached to her abductor that she even denies the abuse she experiences (Dutton). Such bonding is facilitated by dysfunctional childhood experiences confusing physical punishment with affection, which in the case of Rosalind is visualized as her father beating her out of “love.” In addition, her childhood fascination with the fairy tale “The Beauty and the Beast” is interpreted by Rosalind as a story in which she could offer her love to a frightening beast in order to make him better. Eventually, the adult Rosalind constructs a darker tale of a sleeping dragon, imagined in the form of Brian’s huge body placed over Rosalind’s head, who is anxious that if his other slipper drops, it might wake him up and his anger might flare up. The title Dragonslippers invokes the atmosphere of a chilling domestic tale which might be interpreted as a call to re-examine ambiguous messages about the toxic relationships permeating our culture in the form of numerous love songs, romantic comedies and commercials, which often glorify violation of personal boundaries, stalking, and predatory behaviour (Beck, 2018). Penfold’s graphic memoir skillfully depicts the stages in the cycle of abuse and evokes their emotional, physical and social consequences. Moreover, her story also undermines stereotypes that intimate partner violence affects only socially or economically disadvantaged or marginalized communities. She shows that domestic violence can happen to anyone, including an intelligent, beautiful, and successful professional woman. Ultimately, even in the surprising ending, she shows that the seemingly vicious cycle of interpersonal partner violence can be broken if the victimized person decides to reach out for help.

This graphic memoir is aimed at adult readers trying to understand or working with victims of domestic abuse in the form of psychotherapy, social work, and criminal justice system as well as survivors of intimate partner violence. It can be read in a short time, but it might be triggering for survivors of violent relationships who may want to take more time to process their feelings evoked by the images and work through their traumatic memories. The affective power of images and meaningful captions helps to educate the readers about the predicaments of traumatic bonding. The book and its Kindle version contain reference to the resources on the website http://www.dragonslippers.com/home.html. It includes links to reviews and comments, helpful sites and a useful link to fourteen warning signs of abuse, which consist of selected panels of Penfold’s drawn scenes with captions signalling the danger. It can be downloaded by non-for-profit organizations in a printable PDF version, which may be particularly helpful for educators, Young Adult readers as well as social workers, lawyers, police officers, prosecutors and judges.

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Dr Elżbieta Klimek-Dominiak is Assistant Professor of the Institute of English Studies, and Director of Center for Gender Studies at the University of Wroclaw.  In her research and teaching, she explores intersections of violence, gender, race and social class in graphic life narratives, films, and literary fiction.

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—        Kochać zbyt mocno (Kapcie potwora) czyli o tym jak wygląda przemoc domowa [Loving

Too much (Dragonslippers) What an abusive relationship looks like]. Translated into

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—         Dragonslippers. “Warning Signs.” http://www.dragonslippers.com/home.html.

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