This paper analyses female narratives about violent marital relationships, specifically, cases in which facial damages have occurred to women assaulted by an intimate partner. The research aimed to apprehend the meanings of the violence to the victims and also to identify the implications of victimizing experience. The study was conducted by interviews with women attending public institutions such as women police station, health unit, psychosocial support service and educational facility. The analysis, under the sociology of the body view, highlighted the pervasiveness of violent actions that target the female face due emotional and physical marks that will reverberate, in short and long term, in the lives of victimized women. In the light of relational feminist perspective, issues pertaining to both partners in the production of violent interaction have emerged, mediated by social gender constructs. Reverberations of the violent acts over the sense of identity and depreciation of self-image were emphasized as intense psychological suffering sources. The results also point to limits of biomedical model of care, still prevalent in health services, to deal with the complexity involved in marital female victimization and to the need of articulation among the various sectors that this phenomenon concerns.
intimate partner violence; facial damages; victimization; subjectivity