That should be clear enough. I’ll add a couple of stipulations, though, because I’m like that.
Verbal only smackdowns, please. That means using words and nothing but. It doesn’t matter if the rebuke is by spoken or written word, so long as it’s not also preceded by, accompanied by, or followed by physical violence.
I’m primarily interested in literary examples, as opposed to drama, cinema, television, or comic books. Of course, if the thread gets any legs at all, I fully expect people to disregard that admonition by post 14, so I’ll go ahead and given people who do such the finger now so we can move on.
It feels like I’m forgetting something really important, but if I have I obviously can’t remember what. Ah.
And now to reiterate. Please post your favorite examples of abuse victim giving their abusers verbal (as opposed to physical) smackdown.
Would the Easter dinner scene in The Color Purple count? Celie was abused physically and emotionally by Mister, and she does pick up a knife when she goes off on him, but she never touches (or cuts) him and her smack down of him is verbal.
This may not count, because she might have clocked him first, I just don’t recall. What I do remember is Dolores Claiborne, telling her horrible husband, after he hits her with a log, “That’s the last time you ever hit me! Next time, one of us is going to the bone yard.”
Helmer. I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora–bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves.
Nora. It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
(From the Project Gutenberg translation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2542/2542-h/2542-h.htm
She gets in a few other good licks, too.
(You asked for “literary” examples. Please don’t tell me that drama isn’t “literary”!)
From The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens–again a Project Gutenberg grab: )
Granted, this was Nicholas answering Smike’s abuser on Smike’s behalf. But then Nicholas had been mistreated by Squeers, too. Also, granted, there was violence after these words were spoken–but it was initiated by the abuser, not by the victim (Nicholas).
I can’t read so I can’t help you with the literary references. However, the final scene of the timeless classic Revenge of the Nerds fits the bill quite well. I tear up every time I see it.
In Sergio Leone’s*** Once Upon a Time in the West…***
Affter being threatened by the outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards), Jill (Claudia Cardinale) gives this great smackdown:
**
“If you want to, you can lay me over the table and amuse yourself. And even call in your men. Well, no woman ever died from that. When you’re finished, all I’ll need will be a tub of boiling water, and I’ll be exactly what I was before - with just another filthy memory.” **
Actually, a better and shorter smackdown came much earlier in the book.
The evil Toohey has done all he can to destroy Howard Roark. They meet, and Tohey smugly says, “Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.”
Roark answers nonchalantly, “But I don’t think of you.”
In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel The Secret Garden, Colin attempts to bully his cousin Mary (verbally, since he’s sickly and won’t leave his bed). “I won’t let that boy come here if you go and stay with him instead of coming to talk to me.”
Mary lets him have it–verbally. “They may drag me in but they can’t make me talk when they get me here. I’ll sit and clench my teeth…” Etc.
That’s in Chapter 16, and they following chapter has another shouting match between the two of them.
Technically, I suppose you could argue that Mary’s not really Colin’s victim, since she refuses to be. However, he’s certainly trying to bully her.
