Rani Mukerji’s Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway: Why is it difficult to identify abuse | Explained

As Rani Mukerji’s Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway becomes a big hit and the Sagarika Chakraborty’s story touches the hearts of the audiences not only for the fact that she fought with the Norwegian government to get back her children, but also because of the reason that she was a victim of domestic violence. Women are so ashamed of talking about domestic violence or I would say made to feel ashamed that behind closed doors the violence escalates sometimes to a level that it is difficult to identify.

Sagarika Chakraborty opened up to Firstpost recently, in an exclusive interview, how she has been a victim of domestic abuse in Norway in the hands of her husband, in-laws and brother-in-law. Though the issue of domestic violence was shown in a very subtle way Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway, it is an important subject that calls for a conversation and most importantly most women find it difficult to identify abuse.

Author and feminist, Meghna Pant who has also been a victim of an abusive relationship explains abuse is typically meant to scare and intimidate women, not kill them. Most abusers don’t mean to kill. Not at the start. But they do. We see it every day.  She says, “I know it sounds foolish, but even I didn’t know what abuse was. I thought a woman had to land up in a hospital for it to qualify as physical violence. I didn’t know then that even a slap qualifies as abuse. Women who suffer serious injuries because of physical violence range from 19 percent to 55 percent. Not all women who are hit end up in the hospital or the morgue.”

We have an idea that wife-beaters are traditional men who are religious, who are backward thinking, who do not have any education, who are alcoholics – and in reducing them to these stereotypes – we think that domestic violence is a problem that affects some people, not all. But there is no prototype for a perp. Pant explains, “An abuser can talk politically correct things, he can have a revolutionary exterior, he can be well-educated, he can claim to be woke, and under all these layers of sophistication and education – he can be a rapist and a wife-beater and a thorough misogynist. Abusive men do not come with a placard.”

For the case of Sagarika Chakraborty whose life is shown in Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway, we can see her husband is an educated man and works as a geophysicist and is a workaholic. He has a simple exterior and is cultured. But there is a demon that lies inside him and cannot control his temper. He finds fault in everything that his wife does. It took time for Sagarika to come out and say that she is in an abusive relationship because we women are made to believe from the very beginning that abuse is a private matter.

More than physical abuse, emotional abuse is very tough to identify. We are conditioned to compromise and we are desperate at times for love. Author Sreemoyee Piu Kundu says, “Even for upper middle class, educated women our biggest aspiration is finding a man for that validation and also there is an emptiness for human desire for intimacy, physical touch and companionship so all these longings in us in women make us sometimes quite needy. As modern women of today we all know through popular culture as to what is gaslighting.”

99 percent of women have been victims of narcissistic trauma and abuse and it is difficult to identify because we are not conditioned or taught to understand the signs. Sreemoyee adds, “We don’t understand abuse until it happens to us. We may have read it or seen it in films like Thappad. We are constantly told as women to speak in a less loud voice, not dress provocatively, not answer back, not question and when a fight happens, it’s a woman who try to make up and beg the man to get back. I have done it and I think we are all guilty of it. We are not rehabilitation centres for badly raised men. But what are our markers for badly raised men? Most of us don’t know that. Most of us have seen the mothers being the last to eat, she will always try to compromise in a fight, she will be a self-sacrificing Bharat Mata, that is our benchmark.”

Even in intimate relationships we are hesitant to talk about abuse because we are shamed and we are asked why did you take it and why didn’t you walk out. Everybody’s reasons to stay tight in a toxic relationship are different. Sometimes women don’t have the financial means, they have quit their jobs so they are happy being a wife and a mother. Sometimes they don’t have any family support. In Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway, we see the protagonist Debika Chattrejee (Rani Mukerji) has moved from Kolkata to Norway with her husband. In the interview with Firtspost, Sagarika has mentioned that she was working before marriage, but she gave up everything to be a good mother and wife.

Sreemoyee says, “Even in my community Status Single, women are not saying that they are divorced and they are scared of opening up. Women lack a safe space. We don’t really have a sheltered place for battered women. Women are scared of law enforcing authorities. How many times have women from our background gone to a police station? We are scared of the police and the Nation Commission for Women because we think what is going to say. So, it’s a vicious circle.”

We don’t teach our girls what are the markers of abuse and the levels to which you can compromise, adjust and give a person a second chance. Sreemoyee explains, our mothers don’t teach us when we need to stop loving. There is no sex-education in this country and marital rape is not criminalised. It’s a patriarchal society and women who speak up, pay the price for it.  It’s high time that women should stop being this self-sacrificing machine.

Domestic abuse and mental health

Talking about how abusive relationships can affect the mental health of victims, psychotherapist from Mumbai Padma Rewari says, “Abuse can affect mentally as it sits like a trauma in a person’s mind and removing it is very difficult. Often people are reluctant in seeking help and the trauma sets deeper and deeper to an extent where they feel it’s a part of them now but could go crazy with a small trigger. They can lose their control over their mind in such situations. the trauma a person holds, sets in their subconscious mind and therapy can only help them out of it or by talking to someone they are close to.”

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