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Behind the Lines

Domestic Violets

A 4-panel comic shows various scenes of domestic violence. A woman is chained to a man who has her keys. A man holds a woman in a bottle. A bruised woman throws a vase at her partner. A man holds a gun up to his family and says, 'I'm only trying to protect you.'

Jenny Coopes
1991

Here Jenny uses realism to depict the abuse and the terror inflicted on women and children by violent husbands. She shows guns and beer, and the family quivering in fear. But she also, yet again, shows the woman seizing control and, with a title that is a clever wordplay, using that most modest of flowers — the violet — to strike back at her abusive husband.

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