Excerpt From My Memoir in Progress Caroline was not alone in her paradoxical love of her abuser. There also was a woman who chose the pseudonym Sarah Andrews Palmer. She, too, was the victim of Hank’s sadistic sexual excesses, and yet she remained involved with him for decades. Why? Well, Sylvia Plath understood from first hand experience that…
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.Was it the Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe. Or more likely, Sarah speculated, it all starts with anthropology. Females, being physically weaker, have to win and please larger, scary males, in order to be given meat from the hunt, protection from predators, and so on.
A lot of women have violent rape fantasies and dreams, probably more than will admit it. As a child, even before Sarah knew anything about sex, she had those kinds of fantasies, sometimes about male authority figures, like her teachers. Since she was not allowed to go to movies or watch TV she had no idea where these thoughts came from, so she supposed it was something very primitive deep within her brain or soul.
When she was dating in her early twenties she was drawn to older men with power, like the family lawyers from a big law firm, or her professors, whereas her male classmates were drawn to young, sexually attractive women. There was a time when she dated only eligible New York City men who were listed in the Social Register. She was surprised to discover that virtually all of them were sadistic, more so than men in the average eligible dating pool.
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