The Brocken Chain

"The Broken Chain" by M.F.K. Fisher talks about abuse and angry beatings of helpless people. Fisher states that she can only associate herself with these people through empathy. Fisher then goes on to tell her own story about her childhood and the many different forms of abuse she endured. Fisher tells of three specific forms consisting of physical, mental, and emotional abuse.

Fisher describes her childhood as a fair one, but she also tells of frequent discipline. She states that her father was the main disciplinarian in the home. Her mother would wait until her father would come home from work to relay the bad acts that the children had done during the day. Fisher especially dreaded this, and at times wished that her mother would just whack her so it would be over with. Fisher speaks of her emotional abuse by telling how her father would send her to her room for awhile before he would come up stairs to carry out her long awaited punishment. She would go to her room and think over the events that lead her to her fate. She was full of anticipation and despair for the things to come. She knew that her father would soon be there to carry out the spanking she so solemnly dreaded. In her mind this was punishment enough.

Fisher spoke of hearing her father coming up the stairs to give her the long awaited spanking that she had been dreading. But it had become a routine to her. Her father would sit on the edge of the bed and she would pull down her panties exposing her bare behind. She would then bend over his knees while he would spank her with a wooden hairbrush. Fisher explains that as she got older her father would use his hand with an upward slap that was more painful then the hairbrush ever was. The number of slaps she would receive was calculated by her age. She tells of how she would cry a little to show that she had learned her lesson.

Butler 2 Fisher also received mental abuse as a child. There were many times that she took punishment for her sister's