My Take on Romanticization of Abusive Relationships in Fiction (TW: Talk of Abuse)

Trigger Warning!!!

If abuse and abusive relationships is a triggering topic for you,

please skip over today's blog post.

This was a topic suggested to me by one of my followers on my bookstagram. And it's something that I feel needs to be discussed, given today's society and standards.

I feel like there have been so many abusive relationships in fiction, and not all of them have been obvious. For me, one title that comes to mind with an abusive relationship is Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I can hear some of you asking me, "But HBR, how does Jane Eyre have an abusive relationship?" Jane's family life, along with her relationship with Mr. Rochester, could be described as abusive. It's not an overt, obvious abuse, but there are underlying tones of it. Although I haven't been in an abusive relationship, I've had friends and family members who were in an abusive relationship, and I always saw the little red flags in Jane Eyre, which stopped me from actually enjoying the book.

Portraying abusive relationships in fiction can be a good thing if done right with the proper precautions and research. However, there are too many instances where, in fiction, abusive relationships are romanticized. This, for me, makes my stomach churn.

I feel like the romanticization of abusive relationships gives younger generations the wrong idea. Romanticized abusive relationships can give younger people the idea that, if in an abusive relationship, they can somehow magically fix the abuser, helping them to stop and turn them onto the right path. More often than not, this doesn't happen.

Abusive relationships in fiction, even more so when they're romanticized, can be triggering for those who were victims of abuse in their relationships. As a result, the romanticization of these relationships is very harmful to anyone and everyone, victim or not. Abusive relationships can hurt both the victim of the abusive relationship and the victim's family, which is (in my experience) never addressed in fiction.

Should abusive relationships be in fiction? To an extent, yes. But it should be more about showing how damaging these relationships actually are. Abusive relationships shouldn't be romanticized in fiction.