Rape, Forgiveness and Renunciation of Hostility: A
Reading of Avinuo Kire’s ‘The Power to Forgive’
Dr. L. K. Gracy,
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
North-Eastern Hill University, Tura,
Meghalaya, India.
Abstract: Sexual
violence in today’s world is a global problem. In the early modern age, both
the perpetrator and the victim were regarded as tainted by sin after a rape; it
was in the nineteenth century that rape came to be seen as an attack on
individual body. Georges Vigarello in his book A History of Rape: Sexual
Violence in France from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (2001) notes
that the discourse on trauma did not exist until the nineteenth century. The
survivor of such violence does not merely undergo physical trauma but
psychological and emotional trauma too. To be normal again becomes impossible
for the victim. Sexual violence also affects the survivor’s relationship with
the family, friends and co-workers. Avinuo Kire’s short story “The Power to Forgive”
(2015) delves into the psyche of a rape survivor. The key character has been
reliving the moment when she was ruthlessly raped by her paternal uncle which
shatters her future. That her father could forgive the perpetrator has left her
shaken, she couldn’t forgive both the father and the uncle and she had a
strained relationship with the mother. Eventually she decides to forgive her
father on the eve of her marriage and is ready to face her perpetrator too.
Some pertinent observations arise after one reads the story particularly on the
trauma aspect; the study will be tracing the story along the line of Rape
Trauma Syndrome and traverse the complicated state of forgiving a perpetrator.
Forgiveness runs at different levels in the story, the paper will be exploring
the strands taking into account the articles written by Garthine Walker, Cathy
Winkler, Lynda Lytle Holmstrom and others.
Keywords: Sexual violence, Trauma,
Survivor, Forgiveness
Sexual violence has existed in society since ancient times. Any sexual
act directed at a person without their consent is deemed to be a sexual
violence. Women, children, persons with disability around the world
irrespective of age or stature experience physical or sexual violence from time
to time. At times even men, especially in prison settings, including
marginalized people like trans gender also become victims to this violence.
Sexual violence is not confined to a particular area; ironically, women are
more vulnerable to sexual violence at home, which otherwise should have
provided sanctuary and security, and it is inflicted by the very people they
trust. Apart from women, children face sexual abuse by a person they know,
trust or are dependent upon, but many of these cases go unreported for fears of
disrupting harmony in the family or facing stigma. Though India has stringent
Act like POCSO, or the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, to
address various forms of sexual offenses against children below the age of
eighteen, still, some are silenced and others are unable to disclose due to
their age or disability, while those who report often face undue stress and
legal challenges. Garthine Walker in her article “Everyman or a Monster? The
Rapist in Early Modern England, c.1600-1750,” broaches over the views of the
historians regarding the obstacles that have hindered the prosecution of
rapists and how they have been subjected to little interrogation. She states
that-
There, and elsewhere, the rapist at
once eludes and needs no elucidation: we already know him, it seems, though we
may not know when or in what guise he will become embodied. He is every man. He
is a monster. He is a man whom we know intimately. He is a stranger. He may
materialize in our homes, in the streets, or in isolated far-away places. (7)
Sexual violence has always been
characterized by violence against women and male perpetration. Men are presumed
to be dominant, hence, aggressive and superior, whereas women have typically
been considered as subordinate to men and hence weak, passive and inferior.
This unequal power relation between men and women most often leads men to
perpetuate sexual violence against women. The impact of such violence is felt
differently by different victims; they are all traumatized. At the initial
stage, a survivor goes through a range of emotions, they tend to be withdrawn,
isolated, on edge, while others have panic attacks. Though forgiving a
perpetrator is known to facilitate healing, not all sexual abuse survivors can
resort to the act of forgiving. For those who can, the process of forgiveness
goes through suffering, internal motivation, process of forgiveness and
healing. In the article, “The Forgiveness Process in Primary and Secondary
Victims of Violent and Sexual Offences.”, it is revealed that, “All participants,
regardless of whether they had forgiven or not, mentioned that ‘another factor
is just time, it just takes time’ (PV01). They indicated that victims ‘must be
ready to forgive’ (SV01), but that this was an active but ‘slow process’”
(Cooney 111).
In this
article I attempt to read Avinuo Kire’s “The Power to Forgive” from the
perspective of trauma and recovery. Avinuo Kire, a writer from Nagaland, has
authored a number of books including poetry. She has brought out interesting
aspects of ordinary people in her book The
Power to Forgive and Other Stories (2015). The title story of the book,
‘The Power to Forgive’, is a tale of a rape victim belonging to a Naga tribe
who founders, fumbles and tries to come out of the trauma. Tainted and
traumatized by that one brutal act of rape when she was twelve by her paternal
uncle, the unnamed rape survivor goes through a plethora of emotions. Victims
of sexual violence often undergo long-lasting psychological trauma, though
physically they may heal, they still go through shame, guilt, and helplessness
and have low self-esteem. They feel ostracized by society and also feel that no
man would take them as life partners. Such women have been found to consider
their bodies as shameful and disgusting following sexual abuse which further
triggers distressing emotions and contributes to low self-esteem. The victim
here in the story goes through this and perhaps had resigned to the fact that
no man would consider her fit enough to be a spouse, so, when she was asked to
be married, a feeling of relief swayed over her that finally at the age of
twenty-eight she will be settling down in life, irrespective of the fact that the
would be groom is in his mid-forties, is unattractive, unemployed or who would
“…seldom hold his liquor. He had asked her to be his and that excused all his
weaknesses” (Kire 2). This rape survivor
had thought that, “marital life was not to be part of her destiny” (Kire 2) but
now that she is finally betrothed, she perhaps feels grateful: “To be treated
so sensitively, as if she was as pure and untouched as any other sheltered
young woman, touched her, endeared him to her” (Kire 2).
As the
significant day approaches, she rummages through her stuffs and her eyes fall
on a single cutting of the newspaper which she kept with her in a file on which
the headline read, “FATHER FORGIVES MAN WHO RAPED DAUGHTER” (Kire 2), she still
felt strong emotions, sixteen years after the crime was committed: “…the old
familiar wave of anger, shame and betrayal, a mind-numbing tornado of
resentment that always left her with disastrous headaches-all these threatened
to crush her happy mood” (Kire2-3). Victims who suffered childhood sexual
abuse, experience Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. As Anne S Dyer and others
state that in PTSD, victims relive fear, anger, shame, helplessness,
humiliation and guilt apart from “body related difficulties” (Dyer 628). The
victim here experiences not just the mentioned feelings but also “disastrous
headaches” (Kire 3).
Kire’s
‘The Power to Forgive’ not only recounts a rape survivor’s way of handling life
after the incident but throws open to the readers how this crime can alter a
person’s life. Rape is an act of violence that not only humiliates a person but
destroys a person’s sense of self, her trust in the world and in ordinary human
relations. Holmstorm and others in their article “Assessing Trauma in the Rape
Victim” states that: “The trauma syndrome which develops from this attack or an
attempted attack includes an acute phase of disorganization of the victim’s
life-style and a long-term process of reorganization of life-style” (1288).
This heinous crime affects the physical, psychological and social identity of
the person. Having gone through this despicable torture, she perhaps had
expected the father to stand by her. What appalled her after the heinous crime
was the fact that her father had gone ahead to forgive the perpetrator, her
very own paternal uncle. In a study of rape victims, it was found that- “Again
and again, victims stressed how fearful they were. Again and again, victims
turned to family members for support, made changes in life-style, developed
phobias” (Holmstrom et
al. 1290). Similarly, with the protagonist, when she needed the much sought
after support, she felt completely let down by her own father and could not
come out of the trauma. As K A Workowski refers to sexual violence victims
undergoing post traumatic experience thus:
The psychological and social impact of
sexual assault can be profound. Elements contributing to post-traumatic
responses include the personal meaning of the trauma, perception of (not
actual) life threat, actual injury, being the victim of a completed rather than
an attempted rape, (Kilpatrick et al 20) and repeat traumatisation.
Psychological reactions vary greatly, but overall people who experience rape
are more likely to develop post traumatic stress disorder than victims of any
other crime. (Workowski 55)
Though the story does not deal with the explicit characteristics of
rape trauma syndrome like recurrent nightmares, fear of empty public spaces,
avoidance of men, aversion and fear of sex, it touches upon the long lasting
effect that any rape victim undergoes. Cultural narratives and fantasies are
not antithetical to material "reality" but fundamental to social and
political life (Taylor 30). Over the years the meaning of the term trauma has
shifted in common and clinical usage from a "stress or blow that may
produce disordered feelings or behavior" to a "state or condition
produced by such a stress or blow" (Erikson 184). The term trauma is more
often used to refer to the state of mind that ensues from an injury, than to
the blow itself. The perpetrator not only wields his control over the body but
leaves an indelible mark on the psyche of the victim thus “Rapists bury
land-mines in the bodies of their victims, and these emotional explosions -
such as confusion, nausea, nightmares, tremors, depression, shakiness - form
the 'rape trauma syndrome” (Winkler 13).
Based
on the physical occurrence of the sexual assault, Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is
usually rated in three stages. The first phase being Acute, the second linear
stage is Outward Adjustment followed by resolution and integration. Our
protagonist, the survivor, when introduced to us is in the third stage of RTS,
she has come to terms with the fact that a sexual assault took place and she is
making a concerted effort to move on with her life. A few weeks after the
uproar had died down, she was reeling under the Acute stage, she had nightmare
of her ‘uncle’s giant face’ pressed to hers and ‘she could not escape”. She
sometimes relived the first stage and would break “out in cold sweat whenever
she came across anyone who resembled her uncle” (Kire 5-6). Sixteen years down
the line this resilient survivor has learned to live with this incident, “…if
not reconciled to it, she had learned to accept what had happened to her”, and
at times was near normal too but “such light-heartedness was always short
lived” (Kire 4). The stigma of being raped and the fact that the crime was in
the local papers made her know life “before and after the unfolding of these
events” (Kire 4). This further “frustrated her” (Kire 4), as the incident
caught a lot of attention, the whole village stood up, various organizations
voiced out their condemnation and the police personnel were in the hospital
taking her statement; some women belonging to the women’s right organization
from the capital town, Kohima, even came to visit her. Her life changed after
this, she felt that “these few weeks often seemed to sum up the story of her
existence” (Kire 4).
At
times she often wondered whether her life would have been simpler had she kept
the incident to herself or that her mother had known about the crime first
instead of the neighbor. She could have handled it all in private but after
being publicly exposed it “became intolerable when society ‘shared’ the shame”
(Kire 5). At present, being betrothed gave her some solace, she would now be at
par with the other women, having a husband of her own, she realized that “she
was like all women after all” (Kire 7), the sense of being and belonging like
the others, this brought some normalcy into her otherwise bleak life.
As
things seemed to fall in place, she still had to handle some demons from the
past. The fact that she still held grudge against her father was gnawing deep
inside her. As a twelve-year-old, who had just faced this trauma, it was not
easy for her to accept what her father had done and when he had spoken with an
air of parental authority that he has decided to forgive the uncle, all she
felt was utter helplessness, frustration and a sense of betrayal. She couldn’t
forgive the father over this, this is expressed in the lines: “The taunt
stirrings of a strange and alien emotion bubbled deep within her at the words.;
feelings much too complicated for a child of twelve. Frustrated at not being
able to express what she felt, she burst into helpless tears” (Kire 5).
Forgiveness
runs on different levels in this short story. This unconditional forgiveness
coming from the father just seemed inappropriate to the daughter, perhaps the
crime committed is too enormous to be forgiven in the view of the daughter,
perhaps some level of repentance, reparation, atonement or a befitting
punishment was expected.
It is
asserted that forgiveness has a clear, positive effect on the wellbeing of a
human. It is different from the act of condoning, excusing, pardoning or
forgetting, and actually maintains social order, fosters social relationship
and promotes good will. The survivor’s father also spoke about “forgiveness,
justice and family honour” (Kire 5). His final words at the time of the
incident were “One day you will realize that this is the right thing to do”
(Kire 5). The propensity to forgive is generally higher among religious people.
Many a times, parables and narratives on forgiveness in religious books serve
as a model and are highly valued in many religions. This propensity to forgive
is further elaborated by Robert Wuthnow in his article “How religious groups
promote forgiving: A national study”, where a survey is conducted involving
prayer groups, Bible Studies or those religiously oriented small groups. The
survey highlighted that forgiving behavior may have consequences as encouraging
prosocial movement which overcomes addiction and promotes emotional well-being.
He further states that, “Importantly, these internalized beliefs and practices
require a specific socialization originating from religious leaders and
teachers, from parents and friends, from religious small groups, from creeds
and liturgies, and from religious texts” (Rye et al. 2001; Wuthnow 2000).
Forgiveness
is crucial among the Christians, reflecting God’s own forgiveness and fostering
spiritual and relational well-being. The Nagas were introduced to Christianity
towards the end of 19th century by the American Baptist Mission with the active
support of the British colonial officers. Today, Christianity is the major
religion of the Nagas. Forgiveness to the Christians imply releasing a person
from the guilt and debt of sin and it should be motivated by love, grace and
compassion. To a Christian, forgiveness begins with their God and restores
one’s relationship with the Father, i.e. God through Christ his son. This act
of forgiving removes the gap caused by sinning. The Bible exhorts a person to
extend forgiveness to others as God has forgiven his creations, the human
beings. Forgiving others, as per Christianity, releases personal bitterness and
offense. The very line from the Bible, "And forgive us our debts, as we
forgive our debtors" (Matthew 6:12), and a portion of one of the most
important prayers among the Christians, the Lord’s Prayer, prompts any
Christian like the father of the survivor to forgive the rapist but this
gesture from the father’s side does not go down well with the daughter. Whether
to hold the father guilty is a question to be reckoned with, living along the
tenets of Christianity where a person believes God forgives, and thus imitates
God and forgives themselves and the others. Though sixteen years had passed and
the fact that she would soon be getting married and moving out of the house,
she was still cold towards her father. As per tradition, the father was
supposed to walk her down the aisle but she refused to allow her father to do
so, instead she asked her youngest brother, Pele, to do the honours. This
explicitly shows that the daughter has not forgiven her father for easily
showing mercy to the perpetrator. Being a primary victim, only she knew the
trauma brewing in her, religion may teach her to forgive and move on but it was
not humanly possible for her to forgive, neither could she forgive her
uncle. That she still carries the deep
wound inside her can be gauzed from the following statement in the text “In her
subconscious mind, her decision to deny her father his right to give her away
was her manner of punishing him for denying her the right to forgive a crime
committed against her” (Kire 10), shows the hurt she still carries on deep
inside her. Forgiveness has come from the father as was stated in the
newspaper, “In a supreme act of Christian forgiveness…” (Kire 2), but the
victim, that is the daughter, has not forgiven her uncle for the heinous crime
committed.
As
with any kind of violence, sexual violence also tears at the fabric of a
family’s well-being. Not only is the individual affected but it has an impact
on the closest of relationships. The dynamics of relationship with the mother
also changes; she realizes that the incident not only changed the whole course of
her life but her mother changed too. Her mother, the once fearless woman is now
meek and bitter towards life:
Her
mother, once a warm and somewhat boisterous woman, had developed a quaint
meekness, a pessimistic attitude so unlike that of the fearless woman she had
once been. Her mother, she decided, had developed three different
personalities: fierce towards her husband, long-suffering towards her children,
and timid towards society in general. (Kire 7)
But strangely, this strained
relationship starts mending from the very night she got engaged. The enthusiasm
shown by the villagers towards decorating, cooking and cleaning for the
upcoming wedding was overwhelming. That the daughter is being finally accepted
as a bride in spite of being a rape victim somehow “released the mother from
her unhappiness” (Kire 9). But she still had to settle scores with her father.
Though he had been doing his fatherly duties earnestly, yet “An invisible
barrier had been erected the night her father informed her of his decision”
(Kire 9). What could have prompted the father to forgive the perpetrator
remains unanswered, was it to show that he was following the tenets of
Christianity, or the fact that the perpetrator was his brother, or perhaps
being a man he could easily forgive another man. Studies have shown that in
cases of intra-familial sexual abuse, many struggle to manage their divided
loyalties between the perpetrator and the abused person. The father himself is
a victim of this divided loyalty. Nonetheless, the barrier between the father
and the daughter stood still for sixteen long years, there was always the
feeling of resentment and anger, the “painful topic” (Kire 10) was never
discussed between them and “words that should have been spoken were bottled up
instead, and it daily watered the seed of resentment sown deep within” (Kire
10).
When
she finally goes to confront him, “…to tell him everything, all her pent-up
feelings” (Kire 10), on the eve of her wedding, she is shocked to find him
weeping, this too from a man who had never shown “any strong emotion, let alone
cry” (Kire 11). The daughter realizes that she was the “cause of his profound
grief” (Kire 11). It may have been the
social and religious structure which prompted him to forgive the perpetrator,
in public; but in his heart of hearts, he never really forgave the man and was
himself carrying trauma as a secondary victim. On seeing him breaking down,
“She knew what she must do; for the first time, she wanted to do what she
should have done” (Kire 11). She takes that piece of the newspaper clipping and
burns it in the fireplace, “She had encouraged herself to play the victim for
too long. It was now time to let go” (Kire 12). She goes over to her father and
hugs him, “words mattered no more” (Kire 12). Though she knew that she would
have to face new challenges, she felt at ease with the world. She no longer
dreaded facing the perpetrator. In fact, she hoped that she would meet him so
that she can send a strong message, that he could “not ‘ruin’ her” (Kire 12). Her
soul was no longer weary, she finally felt free (Kire12). Martin Hughes in his
article mentions that: “Forgiveness is the cancellation of deserved hostility
and the substitution of friendlier attitudes. It has important consequences,
for which it is highly valued…in the quietening of remorse (113).”
For
many women, forgiveness is a difficult word to hear and act upon; in fact, it
is appalling for someone to tell a woman who has been raped to forgive. Our
survivor took years to finally reconcile with the traumatic experience and its
aftermath. Initially she couldn’t bear to see someone who looked like the
perpetrator but eventually she evolves and realizes that she can meet him
boldly and look at him too. It has taken years but she manages to come out of this
trauma. Similarly, forgiveness does not mean ignoring the past and moving
prematurely to reconciliation. The survivor in this story has taken years to
finally forgive and accept the situation and move on with her life. Her
liberating moment comes when she forgives her father, however, as Karen Lebacqz
puts “…to grant pardon, those on the receiving end must recognize their actions
as being wrong, in need of pardon” (Lebacqz 14).
The
father too finally realizes the wrong he has done and reconciles with the
daughter. Forgiveness means that the wrong done no longer serves as a barrier
to relationship. It is an establishment of an atmosphere that makes possible a
fresh start. The survivor too finally reposes her faith in men by giving a
relationship a chance, getting engaged and willing to settle down, though the
would be husband represents the power of men and the very violence that she had
experienced, in other words, she is exercising forgiveness.
K L
Casey in “Surviving Abuse: Shame, Anger, Forgiveness” states that the right
expression of shame and anger moves the victim of sexual violence forward in
the journey towards healing and wholeness. The daughter goes through both for
the last sixteen years in the aftermath of her being abused. She finally
reconciles. As stated by Cassey-
In
looking at forgiveness from the perspective of a survivor of abuse it is
necessary to restate the importance that shame and anger have in the healing
process. Being free of the dis-empowering weight of shame enables the person offended
against to name the sin and the sinner; in doing this the survivor is then able
to confront their often long suppressed and repressed anger and express it in a
positive manner. The empowerment the survivor of abuse receives by facing the
shame and acknowledging the anger, I maintain, allows then the experience of
forgiveness. (228)
By forgiving her father, she seems to
have renounced the hostility against herself. As such she makes peace with
herself. Thus, the “experience of
forgiveness” helps her in looking forward to a new relationship, endowed with
stability and a promising future.
Works Cited
Casey, K.L. Surviving Abuse: Shame, Anger, Forgiveness. Pastoral
Psychology 46, 223–231 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023093601201
Cooney, Angela, et al. “The Forgiveness Process in Primary and Secondary
Victims of Violent and Sexual Offences.” Australian Journal of Psychology, vol.
63, no. 2, Mar. 2011, pp. 107–18, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-9536.2011.00012.x.
Accessed 6 Jan. 2020.
Dyer, A. S., Feldmann, R., & Borgmann, E. (2015). Body-related
emotions in posttraumatic stress disorder following childhood sexual abuse.
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 24(6), 627–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2015.1057666
Erikson, Kai. "Notes on Trauma and Community." Trauma:
Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.
183-99.
Holmstrom, Lynda Lytle,
and Ann Wolbert Burgess. “Assessing Trauma in the Rape Victim.” The American
Journal of Nursing, vol. 75, no. 8, 1975, pp. 1288–91. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3423598.
Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.
Hughes, Martin. “Forgiveness.” Analysis, vol. 35, no. 4, 1975, pp.
113–17. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3327541. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.
Kilpatrick DG, Saunders BE, Amick-McMullen A, Best CL, Veranen LJ,
Resnick HS. “Victim and the crime factors associated with the development of
crime-related post traumatic stress disorder”. Behav Ther 1989;20:199-214
Kire, Avinuo. The Power to Forgive.
New Delhi, Zubaan Publishers Pvt. Ltd.,2015.
Lebacqz, Karen. “Love
Your Enemy: Sex, Power, and Christian Ethics.” The Annual of the Society of
Christian Ethics, vol. 10, 1990, pp. 3–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23560724.
Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.
Mathew https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-6-12/#:~:text=Thy%20will%20be%20done%20in%20earth%2C%20as%20it,trespasses%2C%20neither%20will%20your%20Father%20forgive%20your%20trespasses.
Rye, Mark S., Kenneth I. Pargament, M. Amir Ali, Guy L. Beck, Elliot N.
Dorff, Charles Hallisey, Vasudha Narayanan, and James G. Williams. 2001.
“Religious perspectives on forgiveness. In Forgiveness: Theory, research, and
Practice” edited by Michael E. McCullough, Kenneth I. Pargament, and Carl E.
Thoresen, pp. 17-40. New York: Guilford
Taylor, Diana. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism
in Argentina's Dirty War Durham: Duke UP, 1997.
Walker, Garthine.
“Everyman or a Monster? The Rapist in Early Modern England, c.1600-1750.” History
Workshop Journal, no. 76, 2013, pp. 5–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43298730.
Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.
Winkler, Cathy. “Rape as
Social Murder.” Anthropology Today, vol. 7, no. 3, 1991, pp. 12–14. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3032794. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.
Workowski KA, Berman SM, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;.
Sexually transmitted disease treatment guidelines. MMWRRecomm Rep 2006;
55(RR-ll):l-94
Wuthnow, Robert. 2000. “How religious groups promote forgiving: A
national study. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion” 39(2): 125-39.