The Burning Bed

Rating:
Summary: an example of what too much pressure for too long can do
Review: I can not honestly say that What Francine did was right, but I can say I can definitely see how in her pressured and stressed predicatment that she felt so trapped and let down by the system that she felt her only sure option was to burn her husband alive. I think this is a good definition of what intense and prolonged trauma can do to a human. Even the best of us can snap in a situation like that. Lenore Walker used the idea of learned helplessness and the battered woman syndrome to explain such behavior and Francine, unfortunately, demonstrated it. I can praise the spirit of survival of Francine, but we must continue to work hard to elimate the climate that would entrap victims into seeking their own solutions because the system did not provide them. Francine did the only thing she could rationally believe would work at that time. I hope and I do feel today, we all have more options.
The book should be used as a continous tool as a warning of what extreme relentless trauma can do to a rational person.
Torn From the Inside Out is a memoir that is similar in many ways.

Rating:
Summary: A pioneering study in domestic violence
Review: The 1984 NBC telepic with Farrah Fawcett probably got more attention than Faith McNulty's book on which it was inspired. In the realm of "Men, Women and Rape," still regarded as the definitive study of rape as an act of violence, "The Burning Bed" does likewise on the subject of domestic violence. Based on the 1970's trial of a battered wife and mother who doused her passed out, drunken husband with gasoline before sending him off in flames, McNulty calls attention to the shame and silence with which the subject of spousal abuse was given, even in that era. The author does a masterful job in detailing the victim's years of physical and mental abuse, so much and so many that triggered what we now call post-traumatic stress or battered wife syndromes. But without those clinical identifications and before it become vogue not to have to be beaten, the wife and mother here is charged with premediated murder, and her only legal defense then was a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. That that was the only plea victims of violence had, in modern history, is shameful unto itself, and McNulty's book doesn't pooh-pooh the subject and confronts it openly and critically. In many respects, the success of the TV adaptation overshadowed the actual book, and that's a shame. Even more than in the dramatization, the book delves into the deepest and darkest pits of domestic violence, brings it to light and commands the judicial system and private citizenry to demand that the matter become a public policy issue. Obviously, McNulty's position paid off. Now, unlike then, the victims of domestic crimes really do have a choice, and that choice no longer is solely physical retaliation against the perpetrator.

Rating:
Summary: Enough
Review: When is enough, enough? For Francine Hughes it took years of abuse and loneliness for her to realize that she had had enough. The Burning Bed was one of the inspirational books that I have ever read. For a young woman, Mrs. Hughes was so courageous. I admire her strength. After years of being beaten by the hands of her husband, Francine retaliates and while her husband is sleeping, starts a fire in their bed. For years she had come so close to death that the thought of dying didn't even scare her; it was like she had hoped for it to come. But after bearing four of his children, she had something to live for. Lonely and afraid she did the only thing she could do. Now facing murder charges Francine is forced to go back to her battered life and let the world know of her sorrow. The Burning Bed follows her through her long trial and the outcome leaves you breathless.