Is this story sending the wrong message (details inside)

I was helping my brother with his literature lesson. He was analyzing a story from the 1980s, when my country had just won the war and the economy was a mess at least that was what the textbook says. The story is about a photographer who needed a nice photo for his company’s calendar. He went to a beach and took a photo of a houseboat on the sea. Then he witnessed a series of domestic violence on the houseboat: the husband beat and threatened his wife, the son fought with the husband… All the while the wife did nothing and even made it out to be the son’s fault for fighting with the father. A few days later the violence escalated and the photographer called the police on the family. The police put the husband in detention and persuaded the wife to divorce him, but she refused, saying that she needed him to maintain the houseboat and she was “destined for hardship” so she had no right to complain. She also told the police that she actually experienced happiness when she saw her children eating good food. The court section ended with the family going back to the houseboat and the police learning a hard lesson of being more open-minded.

Now this is where I seem to have problems with. My brother was taught at school that the woman was on the right and the police was too rigid in their judgement to consider this scenario. But I don’t think I agree with this. I just have this feeling that the woman was displaying dangerous traits of an abused victim. She tried very hard to find reasons for the violence of her husband and vague happy memories, things like “he’s actually a good man” or “I deserve it”. She also seemed to believe that he was the only one for her and it would be worse if she left him.

I know this is a story written in a different time period with different perspective, but I just don’t think this is a good message for the current generation. I don’t know, maybe it’s my own history of emotional abuse that makes me so sensitive to these things.

So, what do you think about that story?