The Guardian article is thought provoking, but really, the author needed to reread the books first - or at least get the article vetted. A lot of errors there, which I won't go into; I've spent too much time talking about Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights already.
Helen was gaslighted by Arthur for a long time and I do think that constitutes abuse. However, I think this is only partially true and isn't just to Helen:
Quote:
Originally Posted by astrangerhere
Many of the character flaws that some of you have pointed out are classic behaviors of abused women. It is wholly believable that she would go back to nurse him. Many women who escape the abuser return to him or her if they believe that the abuser "needs" them or finds themselves in a situation from which "surely they will change."
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I think, as others have said, that Helen was motivated by religious fervor. An important aspect of feminism is that we have to take women at their word, and she said firmly that she was done with him emotionally. I think that's in character and I do believe her.
But I know that's individual. For at that, I do not believe that a Helen would have put her son at risk by returning when her freedom had been achieved with such difficulty. The entire legal apparatus was against her; if Arthur had survived, who knows what might have happened? His signed statement was worthless, even if a moral victory of sorts. But what price moral victory if her son was indoctrinated early into a life of dissipation and vice?