Narratives about conjugality, femininity, and family bonds of imprisoned men’s female partners

Abstract

This study aimed to understand, based on narratives of three women who had different types of connections with imprisonment, the way they discursively express marital and identity arrangements with partners who have or had trajectories marked by imprisonment. By analyzing interviews carried out in the participants’ homes, based on the Critical Discourse Analysis, four aspects were identified as common in the speeches: sacrifice, resistance, accountability, and loneliness. The role of women caregivers who sacrifice themselves in the name of the marital relationship coexisted in the narratives which established the limit to their efforts. Women’s accountability – in which women feel guilty or blame other women for men’s legal and moral deviations – was also evident. The fact of being the only visitors their partners had revealed these women’s daily loneliness, and social and parental overload.