The violence against women (almost domestic violence romanticised) in Threshold doesn bother you?
No, actually. It was needed for the plot, and I think it works. No one ever comments on the violence against babies in the book (the scene of infanticide at the beginning of the book … and, may I add, a particularly gruesome form of infanticide!), so I guess the violence against women must be the ‘in’ thing to get all huffy about. Besides, the woman who is so violated is less concerned about the physical violence, as the fact that her tormentor forces her to learn to read and write – an abhorrent act in her culture, and one she interprets as a violent rape. Violence in our present society is endemic – I don’t shy away from it, whether against men, women or children.
