She Made Me Go out of My Mind: Marital violence from the male point of view

Abstract

Norma Fuller contributes to the understanding of marital violence from the male's point of view. Using data from in-depth interviews carried out among men living in three Peruvian cities, she investigates how men explain the motives that triggered violence against their partners. She concludes that male aggression follows a pattern which expresses the contradiction between a representation of the conjugal bond as founded in mutual reciprocity and solidarity and a masculine culture that stresses male authority and the importance of the networks of male friends.