71 sleeve. I was reading a textbook when the lights went out and the entire house fell
dark. My mother had removed the fuses from the fuse board and taken them away with her.” Briscoe, p.358; ch.23.
Clare has to manage living in the dark until she can no longer stand it and decides to save up money to pay the bill. Clare only eats once a day, a free meal at
school so that she can save some of her income to pay for the bill. When she finally manages to pay the bill, Carmen requires her to pay for her weekly rent for
staying in her house. ‘When are you going to start paying rent?’ she said.
‘I’m not paying rent,’ I said, ‘I’m not old enough. You have to provide me with a home.’
My mother was clearly not interested in knowing any more about me other than the fact that I was in a job and getting paid weekly.
‘Let’s say 3 pences per week,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit on the low side, but we will see how we go. I’ll get you a rent book.’ Briscoe, p.364; ch.24
Clare has been neglected by her mother during her childhood, at the time when Carmen should actually take full responsibility as a mother.
C. Carmen’s, Eastman’s, and Georgie’s Motivations in Doing Abusive Acts
Towards Clare
By studying the kinds of abuse and relating them to the characterization of the perpetrators, the writer expects to find out the motivation driving the
perpetrators to abuse the main character, Clare. Huffman, Vernoy and Vernoy’s 1997 defines motivation as “factors within an individual such as needs, desires,
and interests that activate, maintain, and direct behavior toward a goal” p.364. According to Worchel and Shebilske 1989, “Psychologists have used the term
72 ‘motive’ to describe the condition that energizes and directs the behavior of
organism” p.373. So, this research on abusive motivations attempts to answer the ‘why’ and ‘what causes’ questions about the perpetrators’ behavior.
Using the two approaches in studying motivation defined by Worchel and Shebilske 1989, this thesis will apply the psychosocial theories approach,
specifically the incentive theory. The incentive theory believes that behaviors are not only motivated and determined by internal needs, but also by external events
such as reinforcement. In this study, the writer analyzes not only the internal needs, but also the external events. Internal needs are categorized into intrinsic
motivation or primary motives. Meanwhile, external events are categorized into extrinsic motivation or social motives.
To reveal the motivation of the perpetrators, the writer analyzes their behaviors, specifically verbal behaviors, emotional behaviors and aggressive
behaviors. The reasons behind those behaviors would lead the writer to understand the perpetrator’s motivations. Crosson and Tower 2008 state, “the
cause of physical abuse can be categorized in three. Those are the psychodynamic or character-trait models, the interactional models, and the environmental
sociological culturally based models” p.97.
1. Carmen’s Motivation to Abuse Clare
a. Extrinsic motivation or Social Motives
Worchel and Shebilske 1989 define social motives as, “the motives that come from learning and social interaction, includes the needs for affiliation,
73 aggression, and achievement” p.374. Based on this definition, Carmen’s
Motivation can be categorized as extrinsic motivation or social motives because the incentive of her abusive action comes from her social interaction with Clare. It
includes the need for aggression towards Clare to teach and punish her on the bed wetting, the need for expressing her feeling of dislike and anger towards Clare,
the need for the acknowledgement of her being the boss of the house. Those needs become her motives in being a perpetrator. The following will discuss her social
motives in depth from the frame of Crosson and Tower’s models of abuse 2008, p.97.
1 To Teach and Punish Clare
Carmen’s abusive actions belong to the environmentalsociologicalcultural based models, which focus on the part that the
milieu, and stressors within the milieu, plays in the abuse Crosson Tower, 2008, p.97. This model analyzes Carmen’s thought or way of thinking in abusing
Clare. Carmen’s abuse towards Clare is mainly caused by her thinking that Clare’s bed wetting is inappropriate and wrong in the cultural and societal point of
view, because Clare’s older sisters have all stopped wetting the bed around her age. In Carmen’s mind, a child at the same age as Clare must not wet the bed and
can actually control it, but Clare still deliberately wets the bed. This reason is considered a common cause in child abuse, as explained by Mersch in
MedicineNet 1996-2012, “A common theme when interviewing abusive individuals is an unrealistic expectation of infant or child behaviors. Often they
