Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Heinemann New Windmill Series, 1995.
61-72
197 results Violence
Maya Angelou
When
was only seven, during her year in St Louis, her mother's boyfriend Mr Freeman (a foreman on the railways) raped her. First, one morning when she had been sleeping in her mother's bed, he masturbated with her lying on his chest, while she thought he might be going to die of a heart attack. Afterwards he told her she had wet the bed, which she knew was not true, but also he held her so gently that she felt in a confused way that this must be her real father. He swore her to secrecy on her brother's life (the first secret she had ever kept from Bailey), and left her still feeling drawn to him, though more confused than ever. After another masturbation episode, he actually raped her painfully, and threatened to kill her if she told. She suffered pain, fever, hospitalization, before she told her brother who had done it. In court, a lawyer tried to undermine her. Did the accused try to touch you before the time he or rather you say he raped you? The child understood that she must lie and said No.
Ellen Weeton: Biography
wrote that Stock turned out to be a violent husband: my terror, my misery.
Evelyn Sharp
Trained early in throwing by her brothers, she scored four smash hits with the five stones she threw before being arrested.
Storm Jameson
Caroline Norton
Their relationship was also violent almost from the beginning. It was only a few months after the wedding that George first seized Caroline by the nape of the neck and threw her to the floor. A pattern developed in which she would tease or goad him with her superior intelligence; he would beat her, after which he would grovelingly apologise.
Beryl Bainbridge
maintained (the story varying somewhat on different occasions) that she had been sexually molested—bothered or fiddled with—as a child, but that this was a common experience and had not particularly affected her.
Pearl S. Buck
In summer 1900 the family's life was disrupted by the Boxer Rebellion, an outbreak of spontaneous and violent demonstrations against foreigners which responded partly to famine and displacement of population, and partly to political machinations of Russia, Japan, and European powers. Christians, including Absalom Sydenstricker's Chinese lieutenant and right-hand man, were martyred. The family retreated first to Shanghai and then to the USA on leave. Pearl repressed her memories of sights and sounds that children ought not to have seen or heard.
Mary Fisher
Corporal Punishment
Mary Gawthorpe: Biography
She went on hunger strike in prison and suffered force feeding on several occasions, which was hard on her somewhat fragile health.
Virginia Woolf
endured the sexual aggression of her half-brother
. After returning from the fashionable balls and parties he escorted her to, he would pursue her into her bedroom and fondle her.
Ann Wall
When his mistress asked him years later about Ann's injury (caused by a blow from him when she was a toddler), he said it was done by the midwife at her birth.
Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore
Following the newspaper pieces, a duel either took place or was elaborately faked between Stoney and the Rev.
, founder and proprietor of the Morning Post. Stoney was (or elaborately pretended to be) badly wounded, and then played on the countess's gratitude for his efforts as her champion to press her to marriage. Whether the duel was actual or fictional, it indicates the lengths to which he was prepared to go in his unusual courtship.
Muriel Spark
His severe mental problems were not apparent when they met, but in Africa he was violently quarrelsome (which caused frequent moves from one school to another), and also violently jealous. After the birth of their son,
learned from her parents that her husband's sister had been committed as an insane person. By then, it was clear to
that her husband needed professional help, and their marital life was virtually over.
Jean Rhys
A Violent Nurse
Graham Greene
Graham was said to have spoken his first words, to his mother, several months after an occasion when his sister's pug was run over in the street, and his nurse put the corpse into his pram with him for easier transport home. The words were: Poor dog.
Bessie Head
An early sexual encounter of
, perhaps her first, was violent and unwanted: a rape by an unidentified man whom before this she had admired. In other contexts she said that she had a nervous disposition which disabled her from enduring violence.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
When she was fourteen,
's father began sexually assaulting her. She could speak to nobody about this but took care not to be alone with him. Her mother became displeased when she began rejecting his ordinary marks of affection.
Cecily Mackworth
saw a lot of violence in her childhood, as she later recalled: hounds tearing foxes to pieces, my mother triumphantly displaying the bleeding corpse of a pheasant or a rabbit.
Elizabeth Ashbridge
It seems clear from
's narrative that the difference that happened between her and her master consisted of her resistance to his sexual abuse. When he and his clergymen cronies prayed, she used to think, if there is a God, he is a pure Being, and will not hear the prayers of polluted lips. The one woman she confided in allowed the news of her confidence to get back to her master, and though he knew it was true, yet he sent for the Town Whipper to correct me for it.
Anne Askew
She was interrogated by Bonner and tortured by the Lord Chancellor,
, and
with their owne handes. She was badgered for information about several ladies suspected of Protestantism. She was imprisoned first in
, then in the
, then back in Newgate.
Anna Letitia Barbauld
violently assaulted
when she intervened to try to speed up the compulsive washing which was making him late for an appointment.
Nina Bawden
While at school at Ilford she had an encounter with a man who exposed himself to her in the park. She concealed this incident, since the man's activities had already been reported and students had been forbidden to go through the park on their way home.
Sylvia Beach
was forced to close
, her Paris bookshop, following threats of seizure by the
.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
As her father's financial position declined, he became increasingly dissipated, and violent towards his family.
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
The marriage was fraught with violence.
once bit a chunk out of his wife's cheek during a fight. During another dispute,
burnt Edward's favourite shirt.