A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF ABUSE - CONNECTING THE PERSONAL, THE RHETORICAL, AND THE STRUCTURAL

Narrating experiences of intimate, interpersonal violence is a means by which abused women make the violence coherent to self and to others. Narratives demonstrate that abusive relationships have courses, that women's actions within these relationships are rational and reasonable, and, further, that these actions can be made understandable to others. By using the theoretical literature on narrative structure, this analysis of one woman's (''Jane'''s) story of intimate, interpersonal violence elucidates a system of social meanings that can facilitate the processes by which other abused women, and their supporters, can make existential sense of violence from an intimate partner. This article is a detailed analysis of one woman's violent relationship. Jane's is a story of abuse, not the story of abuse.