Jekyll and Hyde or “Who is this Guy?”—Battered women's interpretations of their abusive partners as a mirror of opposite discourses

SynopsisIn this qualitative study with 22 Swedish women who have left abusive heterosexual relationships, the informants' interpretations of their abusers as ‘Jekyll and Hyde‘ are analysed against the background of two opposite discourses: the pathology/deviance discourse and the feminist/normality discourse. Complex mixes and combinations of understandings were found in the informants' interpretations, which were, however, dominated by conceptualisations traceable to the pathology/deviance discourse. During the analysis of the material a third image emerged, beyond Jekyll and Hyde, i.e. the abusers as ‘hurt boys’.