Honestly, I'm kinda obsessed with a feminist analysis on Eileen Snape, because we know almost nothing about her, and yet, it's more intriguing than most things we see on the books, exactly because it's so realistic to how domestic violence works. We have a witch, with literal magical powers, who gets trapped by a man without magic. It's terrifying to think that a man is able to abuse a woman who is objectively more powerful than him... but we see that happening in real life. Tobias is just a normal man, not a mastermind villain... but he's scary because his actions of violence are so banal.
Tobias is a man like any other: a healthy son of patriarchy and also of a time in which being aggressive toward one’s wife was fairly normalized, especially in impoverished environments where men were also justified with the argument of the “pressure” they were under to provide for their families. I’ve always thought of Tobias as an ordinary working-class guy who probably worked in a factory under dreadful conditions, and who, given the historical context, likely came home completely exhausted and wanting to yell at his bosses, but since he couldn’t yell at them without risking his job, he instead yelled at and abused his wife.
I also think the factor of fragile masculinity plays a big role, because he probably had a huge inferiority complex partly due to his situation, mixed with that traditional masculine need to mark dominant territory. Since he couldn’t be dominant in his work environment because he was just a factory pawn, he was dominant at home with his family, who turned out to be more extraordinary than him because both his wife and his son had powers. That likely affected his self-image and his sense of security as the dominant male, so he not only took out his usual frustrations on them, but violence also became a way to impose himself on them, a way to prove (mainly to his wounded ego) that despite having no powers and being “normal,” he could control and dominate them and continue to be the man of the house.
Magic was something beyond his control, so he needed to contain it somehow, and that way was fear and violence. It’s a case like so many others. On top of that, he had the advantage that Eileen was outside her world, probably without friends, contacts, or anyone in her environment who could help her, so she was completely at his mercy, totally isolated. It’s a classic case of gender-based violence.
