Domestic Violence: A Tightly Coiled Spring

Masum in Pune, India gets full credit for formulating the coiled spring of violence
Text and graphic developed by the Institute
Concept developed by Masum

The local context

This depiction of the experience of domestic violence is credited to rural women who attend Masum’s Health Clinics in the city and surrounding rural areas of Pune, India. Women live in close proximity to their natal family and seek refuge there when the marital home is violent. The latter typically houses the couple, the husband’s parents, and his married and/or unmarried siblings with their families. The natal home similarly houses an extended family.

The spring

• Each coil of the spring represents a cycle of violence—with its tension building, violent attack, and relief stages.
• This spring denotes repetitive violence in the marital home and the tightening of the coils.
• The smaller springs outside the central one illustrate the abuses women experience when they seek refuge in the natal home.
• Domestic violence is more than a series of violent incidents; it is also about lives saturated with fear and devaluation.

The violence – impunity, rejection and subjugation

• Early in the marriage, after a violent incident the woman leaves to go to her natal family for help or refuge. Initially they are fairly sympathetic and take her in. She returns to her marital family a few hours or days later.
• As domestic violence incidents occur, the coils in her marital home start to tighten and she keeps returning to her natal home for refuge.
• As she goes back and forth, her natal family becomes less and less welcoming –they may force her to return to her marital home rapidly; and even abusive – refusing to feed her and/or her children. This abuse is represented by the smaller springs.
• Thus, the periods of respite become shorter at best, and abusive at worst.
• Meanwhile the incidents of domestic violence increase in frequency and severity, represented by the downward spiral of the spring and the tighter coils of each cycle of violence.
• What is in fact happening is that family members in the marital home are abusing the woman with greater impunity because they see how the natal home is rejecting her. They derive validation from the natal family’s abuse: “See, even they don’t want you, even they think it’s your fault”.
• Yet again, the coils of the spring keep tightening for the woman.
• The downward spiral of violence ends in subjugation or death.

Applications of the coiled spring to our work in the U.S.

• How would we adapt or apply the Coiled Spring of Violence to describe our women’s experiences of domestic violence in this country? Although the circumstances are not identical, there are some parallels. If an abused woman here is not going to her natal home, is she going to natural helpers in her community? Is she coming to our agencies? Is she going to her teenage or grown children? How are these resources helping her to negotiate the landscape? What happens in this country, when she steps outside the spring, tries to leave her abusive home? Do the coils tighten when she goes back? Does this mean that she should get out when she can? and if that is the case, does it mean that we should also focus on leaving as the best intervention?

• So many intervention models are premised on women leaving abusive relationships. If we accept that violence is a coiled spring that only tightens with time, then what are the implications of staying and leaving? The conditions in the U.S. are clearly different from rural India. So, are battered women’s lives here ending in death and subjugation? We’d like to think not, what then are the alternatives?

• Will Asian and Pacific Islander battered women in the U.S. find that the coiled spring captures and describes their experience accurately? If so, can it mobilize them to seek help sooner? As advocates we could start to present the coiled spring –instead of the cycle of violence- to the women we work with. If they agree that it closely resembles the domestic violence and help-seeking situations in their lives, then it will deepen our understanding and affect how we formulate our interventions.

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