Law and Order and Domestic Abuse

In The Maids, the law overshadows the chaotic antics of the oppressed and the tyrant. Embodied by the execution, who will hold the body of the criminal lovingly in a final embrace, and represented by the simple ringing of a telephone, The Law becomes the true master of all human striving, the final and implacable lord whose command is death.

Against this authoritarian version, Madden Dempsey, in Prosecuting Domestic Violence, sees the law as malleable: admittedly, she spots its patriarchal assumptions and infrastructure, but explicitly calls for a feminist project to address the problem of domestic abuse. Including prosecutions made against the wishes of the victim (leading to the bizarre description of domestic abuse cases being categorised as "victimless"), Dempsey's book is partially an attempt to justify her own policies as a state prosecutor and develop a way to combat systematic prejudice within the legal system against women. Rather than the over-powering iconography of the law as executioner that Genet creates, Dempsey sees the law as amenable to be shaped by the people involved in it.

Genet and Dempsey, however, do agree that the law shapes society. While Dempsey clearly concludes that the process is mutual - her own feminist beliefs inspire her approach to domestic violence, and she sees the law in terms of its potential for change - Genet is more interested in the way it corrupts the humans beneath its sway. Since Genet was happy to embrace his criminality, it's reasonable to suggest that these two interpretations of the law come from opposite sides of the line.

Prosecuting Domestic Violence is unapologetic in its intentions: domestic abuse is seen primarily as a matter of male violence against women. Having worked in the system, Dempsey has plenty of evidence and while current British statistic identify forty per cent of domestic abuse victims as male, when it comes to murder, women are much more likely to be victims (around five female to every one male). Rather than seeing each incident as isolated, she weaves them into a broader attack on women. It is this overview that allows her to insist on prosecutions in those cases where the victim is uncooperative. 

Eve was Framed lists various reasons why a victim of domestic violence might be less than helpful: Dempsey cuts to the chase and looks at the consequences of prosecution for Women, even if it means denying agency to a particular woman. Helena Kennedy, more interested in the historical reasons for prejudice (Dempsey is unafraid of blaming the patriarchy, and brilliant dissects the subtle differences between discrimination, sexism and misogyny), notes that the English legal system erred on the side of keeping couples together - the current use of civil rather than criminal law in domestic abuse cases, at least in the first instance, continues that emphasis. Dempsey is not so bothered: she is all about getting the conviction, not fixing individual men with anger issues or maintaining the nuclear family.

Ironically, both Genet and Dempsey see the power of the law as authoritarian. The Maids have no ability to change its convictions - their attempt to use it to punish their mistress only leads to their destruction. Dempsey would have the law attacking the bigger crime of violence against women, but relies on the law as having that level of power.