Less deceived: memoirs and fictions of abusers gaining self-knowledge?

December 12, 2021 5:10 AM

Memoirs that represent addiction may show two distinct people: the addict and the sober person. The sober narrator has perspective and self-knowledge that the addict character does not. The memoir shows a credible path that leads from the one to the other. Are there examples of texts like this for people who have used positions of power to be sexual harassers and abusers?

I'm familiar with fictional texts that brilliantly show abusers grasping at lies and self-deception to the end: Clarissa, Lolita, Disgrace. Are there first-person memoirs or fictional texts that show a credible way out, a journey to self-knowledge that is reparative, texts which someone who has done abusive things might read, recognize himself (it won't surprise you that for the reasons I'm asking it's most salient to imagine a male reader), and be able to imagine a way to becoming a different and better person?

I don't want it to limit responses, and I welcome ideas that challenge or reframe my question, but the three most immediate inputs to my query are reading Michael Clune's heroin memoir White Out, this week's Buzzfeed article about abuse of power at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and the philosopher Agnes Callard's idea of aspiration.

posted by sy to Human Relations (6 answers total)

That's a tough one. Don Giovanni is unrepentant as the Commendatore sends him to hell, and the narrator of Lolita is self-deluded to the point of being unreliable. In today's world, it's easier for an addict or murderer to get redemption than an abuser.

The closest i can think of are some movies where the libertine tries to score with the virtuous girl (possibly Doris Day), and they end up together. Similar in musicals Guys and Dolls and Grease.
posted by SemiSalt at 9:34 AM on December 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

In The Color Purple, Celie's ex-husband and abuser, Mr. ___ , repents and apologizes at the end of the book (movie too, I think(, and becomes much kinder in general. But there aren't a lot of details about his journey in that direction as the story is more so from Celie's perspective.
posted by bearette at 9:52 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

Is it specifically sexual abusers you’re interested in? If more general abuse of power works, then Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
posted by penguin pie at 10:14 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

Not specifically sexual except by inference but there's some of this in Abolitionist narratives. It is the theme of Amazing Grace, by John Newton, a former captain of slave ships who became an abolitionist and later an Anglican minister. In John Wesley's New Room in Bristol one of the exhibits is a letter from Newton describing his conversion (sudden, like St Paul's.) I can't find the text online but maybe better google skills would do it.

The New Room is low key and amazing if anyone's ever in Bristol.
posted by glasseyes at 4:04 PM on December 12, 2021

I don't know if it fits exactly, but your question instantly made me think of David Carr's The Night of the Gun. Carr was a (brilliant, imo) journalist with a successful career, but for much of it he was an addict. In The Night of the Gun, he essentially turns his journalistic tools on himself, and investigates his own behavior during the depths of his addiction. He contrasts his own memory (or lack thereof) with the memories of others, and even finds evidence (records, recordings, etc.) that show his own memories to be false. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever read.
posted by dorothy hawk at 7:53 PM on December 12, 2021 [6 favorites]

This is a minor plot point in Alka Joshi’s book The Henna Artist.
posted by ec2y at 4:03 AM on December 13, 2021