Available From UC Press

The relationship between class and intimate violence against women is much misunderstood. While many studies of intimate violence focus on poor and working-class women, few examine the issue comparatively in terms of class privilege and class disadvantage. James Ptacek draws on in-depth interviews with sixty women from wealthy, professional, working-class, and poor communities to investigate how social class shapes both women's experiences of violence and the responses of their communities to this violence. Ptacek's framing of women's victimization as "social entrapment" links private violence to public responses and connects social inequalities to the dilemmas that women face.

"The intersectional approach to class analysis of variation in men's intimate violence against women is important and effective. There is not a lot of research that allows analysts to make the systematic cross-class comparisons that are at the heart of this book."—Lisa D. Brush, author of Poverty, Battered Women, and Work in U.S. Public Policy

"That intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs across all socioeconomic statuses is often discussed, but rarely do we see a study that presents narrative data from across this spectrum. This work opens a discussion of IPV more focused on women's experiences of violence through a racial and economic lens and uses women's own voices to address some of the prevailing perceptions of woman abuse across different demographic groups."—Shannon Collier-Tenison, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

"Feeling Trapped makes a much-needed contribution to our understanding of the abuse of women and social class, a subject far too often neglected in existing scholarship. James Ptacek's groundbreaking offering is destined to become a classic, one that will undoubtedly advance innovative progressive policy and practice."—Walter S. DeKeseredy, Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University, and author of Woman Abuse in Rural Places

"A must-read for anyone in the field. In this critically important book, Ptacek addresses the understudied question of how social inequalities impact women's abilities to resist and escape intimate partner violence. The powerful words of survivors illuminate Ptacek's groundbreaking and insightful work, which I will be adding to my syllabi immediately."—Raquel Kennedy Bergen, author of Wife Rape: Understanding the Response of Survivors and Service Providers