Coercive Control: From Literature into Law

“强制控制：从文学到法律”将是第一个跨学科项目，旨在研究英国文学小说与强制控制法律之间的复杂关系。2015年，英格兰和威尔士的家庭暴力立法扩大到包括“威胁、羞辱和恐吓”以及“旨在使一个人服从和/或依赖的一系列行为”。虽然强制控制罪可能涉及持续的剥削、剥夺、管制、隔离和堕落，但仍然存在一种令人不安的误解：认为家庭虐待仅限于身体暴力，而不是心理暴力。英国妇女援助联合会（Women’s Aid Federation of England）曾致力于将强制控制定为刑事犯罪，“现在希望确保每个人都明白这是什么”。创造性的叙述在提高人们对这一新罪行的认识和理解方面发挥了至关重要的作用。英国广播公司第四频道的《弓箭手》（The Archers）获得了2017年英国广播公司音频戏剧奖（The Audio Drama Awards）的杰出贡献奖，该剧中的罗布和海伦·蒂奇纳（Rob and Helen Titchener）夫妇的故事情节引起了公众对持续强制控制带来的令人不寒而栗的心理影响和重大法律影响的关注。妇女援助组织的首席执行官波莉·尼特（Polly Neate）报告说，“阿切尔效应”使全国家庭暴力求助热线的电话增加了20%。在海伦受审的几周内，主流媒体听到了许多强制性控制的幸存者的声音，对他们来说，阿彻夫妇提供了第一个与他们自己一致的经历的描述。最近，十集迷你剧《少女》（2021）向观众展示了心理和语言虐待的毁灭性和可怕的力量，导致Netflix制作了“历史上最重要的剧集”。但早在强制控制被识别和定罪之前，小说作家就已经探索、分析、挑战和想象了逃离强制和控制关系的方法。这将是第一个结合文学和法律研究方法的关于强制控制的项目。虽然在英国，强制控制最多可判5年监禁，但几个世纪以来，虚构的女性一直被囚禁在心理虐待的叙事中，这有助于形成对其深远影响的理解。利用我们在维多利亚时期至今的法律史和文学方面的综合专业知识，我们的网络将提出有关英国写作及其心理、社会和教育影响的重要问题。从维多利亚时代的婚姻情节，到中世纪新哥特式的情节剧，再到当代关于不平等婚姻的酷儿叙事，监视和监管的文本策略是如何驱动不同的小说的？现实主义作者的无所不知和后现代文本的欺骗如何被解读为对强制控制的元虚构思考？强制性控制的叙事是如何赋予读者权力并放大幸存者的声音的？虽然我们的项目将受益于国际学者的重要贡献，包括主讲人Celia Marshik教授（石溪大学英语系）和Simon Stern教授（多伦多大学法学院），但它也将调查地方一级强制控制的叙述。该项目在约克郡的写作中有着重要的根源，由Brontë家族的霍沃斯和韦克菲尔德的乔治吉辛。这些当地的联系将为我们与“待在原地”和“团结女性”的工作提供信息，这是约克郡的慈善机构，致力于支持性暴力和强制控制的幸存者。

'Coercive Control: From Literature into Law' will be the first interdisciplinary project to investigate the complex relationship between British literary fiction and the law of coercive control. In 2015, domestic violence legislation in England and Wales was extended to include 'threats, humiliation and intimidation' and 'a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent'. While the crime of coercive control may involve sustained exploitation, deprivation, regulation, isolation, and degradation, a troubling misconception persists: that domestic abuse is limited to physical, rather than psychological, violence. The Women's Aid Federation of England, which campaigned to make coercive control a criminal offence, 'now wants to make sure that everyone understands what it is'.Creative storytelling has played a crucial role in raising awareness and shaping understandings of this new offence. The Rob and Helen Titchener storyline on BBC Radio Four's The Archers, which won the Outstanding Contribution Award at the 2017 BBC Audio Drama Awards, drew public attention to the chilling psychological effects and momentous legal implications of sustained coercive control. Polly Neate, CEO of Women's Aid, reported that the 'Archers effect' saw a 20% increase in calls to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline. For many survivors of coercive control, whose voices were heard in the mainstream media in the weeks surrounding Helen's trial, The Archers provided the first account of an experience that aligned with their own. More recently, the ten-part miniseries Maid (2021) has shown viewers the devastating and terrifying power of psychological and verbal abuse, leading to the claim that Netflix has produced 'the most important series in history'. But long before coercive control was identified and criminalised, writers of fiction had explored, analysed, challenged, and imagined ways of escaping from coercive and controlling relationships.This will be the first project on coercive control to combine literary and legal research methodologies. While coercive control now carries a maximum of five years in prison in the UK, fictional women have been imprisoned in narratives of psychological abuse for centuries, helping to shape understandings of its far-reaching effects. Drawing on our combined expertise in legal history and literature from the Victorian period to the present day, our network will ask important questions about British writing and its psychological, social, and educational impact. How have textual strategies of surveillance and regulation driven different fictions, from Victorian marriage plots and neo-Gothic mid-century melodramas to contemporary queer narratives of unequal unions? How might realist authorial omniscience and postmodern textual trickery be read as metafictional meditations on coercive control? How do narratives of coercive control empower readers and amplify the voices of survivors?While our project will benefit from significant contributions by international scholars, including keynote speakers Professor Celia Marshik (English Department, Stony Brook University) and Professor Simon Stern (Faculty of Law, University of Toronto), it will also investigate narratives of coercive control at a local level. The project has significant roots in Yorkshire writing, by the Brontë family of Haworth and George Gissing of Wakefield. These local connections will inform our work with 'Staying Put' and 'Together Women', Yorkshire-based charities working to support survivors of sexual violence and coercive control.