Butterfly Pinning: an exploration in coercive control

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To the outside world Alec and Tess have the perfect marriage. Yet, behind closed doors a stormy pendulum of seduction and coercion exists. Alec is masterful, mercurial, chameleon. Trapped like a pinned butterfly, Tess survives by silence and small acts of compliance.

Late one afternoon, after revealing his affair with a sixteen year old schoolgirl, Alec left the house in a rage. A loud bang broke open the stillness. Tess felt the air shudder around her, felt it in her blood. Soothing the child, she ran to the rubbish tip on the hill near their house and is shocked on her arrival. What new game is this?

Butterfly Pinning is a modern tale in verse, mirrors the themes of Thomas Hardy’s classic, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Between bold strokes and subtle nuances, Brooks addresses coercive control and sexual abuse where the marriage contract, upheld as a woman’s sacred protection, was too often her greatest vulnerability.

Written as an act of resistance against silence.