INTERVIEW

'I do believe there are some morally responsible for Li- women who are addicted not sa's death. They were vio- to violence, but to the high lently opposed by those who emotion of life with the bat- maintain that Hedda Nuss- terer. The rest of the world is baum was just as much a very grey and dull to them,' victim as the little girl. asserts Susan Brownmiller, Brownmiller's fictional in- US feminist and author of terpretation of the case, the controversial new novel, Waverly Place, has contri- Waverly Place, based on the buted to the schism, attribut- notorious Hedda Nussbaum- ing Nussbaum's paranoia Joei Steinberg case of wife- and her failure to act, largely battering and . to drug addiction - what Nussbaum and Steinberg Brownmiller calls 'cocaine were arrested in December psychosis' - and the fact 1987, when detectives called that Joel was her supplier, to their Greenwich Village rather than the predictable apartment and found their result of long-term abuse. six-year-old daughter lying Susan Brownmiller, journal- in a fatal coma from a severe ist, author and academic, blow to the head. Their two- was one of the founders of year-old son sat in his the Women's Liberation excrement-soiled nappies, tied Movement in 1967, and author to his playpen. Both were of the seminal feminist study illegally adopted. In Brown- on rape, Against Our Will miller's words, it was a real (1975), and Femininity (1984), man bites dog story, shock- and co-founded Women Against ing New Yorkers not so Pornography in the early much because of Lisa Stein- 1980s, which she has now left berg's death - one of 103 after internal disagreements. children killed annually in Waverly Place is her first by their carers - novel, and her whole approach but because of the family's is coloured, maybe even dis- status. This was no deprived torted, by her intense, emo- black ghetto family, they tional response to the case. were part of the professional Brownmiller lived in the classes, he a successful couple's neighbourhood, like lawyer, she a children's book her they were Jewish, middle- editor. class, professionals, people It was to turn into Ameri- she could have known, people ca's most publicised case for whom such an act should ever of domestic violence. In have been impossible. addition to occurring on the From the moment Brown- national media's doorstep, miller watched their arrest the three-month trial was the on her local station, she was first to be televised live, obsessed by the case and the winning huge ratings for the individuals. When Lisa Stein- CBS network. The Hedda berg died three days later, and Joel real-life soap opera The Violent Brownmiller began to write replaced the banal afternoon her 'imagination of what had soaps and quizzes, transfix- Village happened'. 'There was no ing audiences with tales of way I couldn't write about drug abuse, sado-masochistic The novel Waverley Place charts a this case,' she says, 'it just sex, and cults. Initially, case of wife-battering that divided the women's move- galvanized me.' She res- Nussbaum was charged along- ment in the United States. Kim Hendry talks to author earched extensively, talking side Steinberg, with second- Susan Brownmiller about her response to the case to the couple's friends, col- degree , but her leagues, neighbours, teachers lawyer made an immunity at Lisa's school, many of deal with the prosecution who was in fact near to death and revolted; the woman whom were already known and, after months of psycho- from her injuries, and who who could not, or would not, to her. 'I knew that the heart therapy, she was able to for three hours remained protect her child. of their story would never be testify against her former alone in the apartment with This question of Nuss- told in court, nor by either lover. the comatose Lisa without baum's culpability - why did survivor. So I felt that it was It was around Hedda Nuss- calling an ambulance, because she stay? Was she victim or the novelist's job - because baum's pulverised features she 'didn't want to be dis- accomplice? - provoked a it was the relationship over a and controversial figure that loyal to Joel'. Joel Steinberg, major split in the New York number of years that was much of the public debate the murderer, was quickly women's movement. Some crucial - and that I would revolved. Here was the woman relegated to that familiar feminists, like Susan Brown- write the book that Hedda who had lived with Steinberg category of mad, bad men, miller, believe Hedda made Nussbaum should write.' for 10 years of escalating people 'understood' him. It a conscious decision to stay, Waverly Place's 17-year tra- mental and physical torture, was Hedda who mesmerised and must therefore be held jectory begins when 'Barry

47 MARXISM TODAY OCTOBER 1989 INTERVIEW

Kantor' first meets 'Judith brought up on charges of Winograd'. Composed in the reckless endangerment. 'I form of diary entries, Brown- can't forgive her for letting miller gives a plausible Lisa die. When I sat in the explanation of what must courtroom and watched her have happened, skillfully testify I just hated her. I saw weaving in viewpoints of the a very tough and callous situation from the different lady.' Other observers were outsiders who were in a posi- moved by Nussbaum's resi- tion to help. But, despite her lience. professed aim of writing In Against Our Will, Susan Hedda's story, we don't Brownmiller passionately ar- enter the battered woman's gued that female masochism skull, we don't participate in did not exist. Yet now she can her long, slow descent into ask, 'Why is it not possible utter dependence. Instead that women can be addicted we are offered a series of to violence? How do we know telling, compulsive snapshots. that Hedda didn't have a Brownmiller had never writ- psychopathology that dove- ten about domestic violence tails with Steinberg's? I don't before, although she had believe that she enjoyed be- read all the relevant litera- ing beaten, but I believe that ture: 'I think that for a long she enjoyed the attention she time I'd wanted to say some- got from Joel while she was thing about battery. I'd felt being beaten, and that she that the battered women's enjoyed the honeymoon pe- movement had taken the riods after the beatings. And theory that we - I - had I believe she got enough gra- created about rape and applied tification frcm the relation- it to battery in a way that ship to stay in, or else she wasn't altogether sound. I would have gotten out. All said in Against Our Will that Hedda had to do was get out.' any woman could be a victim Brownmiller's position is it- of rape, but I don't believe self too simple, ignoring the that any woman can be a vic- effects that abuse has on a tim of battery. Any woman victim; eroding her confi- can be hit once, maybe even dence, instilling self-doubt, twice, but a number of blame, guilt. Sapping her women will leave. Women I will. A batterer routinely know who would have no- brainwashes his victims. In thing to do with men in gen- the words of veteran femin- eral, and would have got rid ist campaigner Sandra Honey of this guy in two seconds, he 'creates her reality', and say 'there but for the grace the longer and more extreme of god go I, we all could have the abuse, the greater the been Hedda Nussbaum. I woman's isolation, helpless- could not have been Hedda ness and lack of choices. Nussbaum.' Many women do leave when The disagreement between they realise their children Brownmiller and the US bat- are in danger, but others are tered women's movement unable to. Years of slow, centres on Brownmiller's systematic violence gradually vehement distancing of her- reduced Hedda Nussbaum to self from Nussbaum, and this level, by the time of Li- women like her, and her be- sa's death, she was comp- lief that Nussbaum 'partici- letely dominated by Joel pated' in her own brutalisa- Steinberg. tion. Brownmiller feels the In discussing this case movement has made a 'ter- people have been polarised rible mistake' in rushing to around the issue of whether Nussbaum's defence. 'It's a tortured, dying woman bad politics to seize on a case failed to protect her child, as and hold it up as an example a result they have tended to of your thinking, because ignore the question of whether inevitably you have to simp- we live in a society that of- lify, and if you find things fers battered women shelter you don't like, you're going when they try to escape. The to suppress them.' Brown- answer - for Britain as miller can only see Hedda much as the US - is no. Nussbaum as a 'passive child Waverly Place is published by Hamish killer', who should have been Hamilton £12.95.

48 MARXISM TODAY OCTOBER 1989