I thought I'd post this thing I wrote analyzing Anthy as an abused girl, because of this post in the Anthy+Utena thread:

brian wrote:

However here is a scene no one has mentioned yet: Anthy is getting raped by Akio (for the first time?). Meanwhile Utena is sitting forlornly on her bed whispering, "Anthy, where are you?"

I think that's a controversial interpretation of Anthy & Akio's sexual encounters.  I never viewed it quite like that, although I do think Anthy has been abused her whole life.  I think one of her important functions in the series is to represent a repressed, emotionally warped abused girl.

So, here's the ... semi-essay I wrote.  I call it a semi-essay because of the style, but it isn't short:

I believe that Anthy represents an abused girl.  It's arguable that Anthy herself created her situation and made herself into a Witch by her own choice.  It's possible to suggest that she seduced her brother and that she takes pleasure from her passive-aggressive manipulations.  There's a case to be made that she is as bad as Akio, if not worse.  I think there's truth in those statements, but it makes her more sympathetic, rather than less.

Anthy is a textbook case of an abused woman.  She doesn't have normal social interactions with her peers.  She is isolated, withdrawn, prone to disassociative states.  She is extremely passive and overly obedient in her role as the Rose Bride.  She demonstrates age-inappropriate, childish behavior with Chu-Chu and her rabbit dance and lashes out spitefully (though subtly) as revenge against people who slight her.  She doesn't concentrate in school and makes terrible grades.  She is presumably promiscuous, probably having sex with whichever champions want to.  Her sexual behavior with her brother is consistently unhealthy and inappropriate.  She attempts suicide at least once that we see.

Anthy was, I believe, neglected as a child.  Her brother was out all the time, busy helping every girl become a Princess, saving all the girls from any threat.  All the girls except his sister.  The people of the world only cared about themselves and their own daughters.  Anthy was an outsider, the only one of her kind.  Her brother was essentially the god of their world and she, too, was more than human.  But while he had the duty of a Prince, she had nothing.  And no one cared.  When she finally asserted herself, she experienced the major trauma of being stabbed, and the consequent destruction of Dios for which she was partially to blame.  Then there followed an unspecified number of years of emotional abuse by Akio, physical abuse from the swords, and (at the very least) dysfunctional sexual behavior (maybe even sexual abuse).  If the events in the series are any indication, she also suffered constant abuse at the hands of students at Ohtori.

We can see that Anthy's motives for locking Dios away weren't entirely selfless.  On the one hand, the poor guy was exhausted and killing himself.  On the other hand, Anthy was certainly jealous and probably jumped at the chance to have Dios to herself, to take a small measure of revenge on a world that didn't care about her.  Her brother was killing himself over everyone but Anthy, while he and the entire world ignored her loneliness.  So she did what seemed right to her, encouraged by her own resentment.  She didn't deserve what happened, which even Akio agrees with--it's a large part of what made Akio the way he is. 

But Anthy begins to internalize the swords' label for her --Witch -- in order to give herself some small illusion of control over the situation.  She becomes the Witch, even relishes being the Witch, as protection against the pain of being hated.  This didn't happen overnight.  At first, Akio says himself, he thought of her as a goddess who had sacrificed herself for the one she loved.  At first, that was mostly what she was.  But over the years, Anthy deliberately locked away the better parts of herself.  Anthy blames herself for what happened to her, and for what her brother became as a result.  This causes her to self-identify as a Witch.  The only other person in the world that she cares about also calls her a Witch.  It's no wonder she has no faith in her own worth beyond that.

Anthy is also being constantly tormented at Ohtori.  Not only is she being impaled constantly by the swords, which are real within the context of the series, but there is the emotional torment.  The swords sticking out of her represent her chronic emotional pain, which manifests itself psychosomatically as physical pain.  At one point, Akio claims he is not the one who is torturing her.  Anthy doesn't blame Akio for not saving her because she herself feels guilty for creating the situation they are in.  She has made a martyr of herself out of feelings of shame.  She knows she didn't try to "save" Dios out of entirely pure intentions.  She also knows that she betrayed herself when she chose to become a Witch.  She is even betraying her brother, in a way, by enabling his cruelty and manipulations.  She twists and uses innocent (using that word loosely) duelists for her brother's ends.  She has a lot to feel guilty about, in her mind. 

Finally, there is the way Anthy is treated by the students at Ohtori--not just the duelists, but also the average student.  She is on several occasions confronted by students, accused, yelled at, and slapped.  This indicates that Anthy has suffered repetitions of the mob attack for years.  Her life in Ohtori has simply reinforced her dedication to her role as Rose Bride and Witch, as well as her innermost withdrawal from the world.

It's little wonder, given how Anthy has been hurt, that she has become someone that hurts others.  She does it in a quiet and passive way, unlike Saionji, who lashes out physically in visible rage.  That's part of what makes her so scary--someone who has gone through what she has should have empathy, but Anthy doesn't seem to.  And, furthermore, she perpetrates her cruelty in a calm, calculating way.  She does callous things for revenge and because she needs a sense of control.  Objectively, Anthy is as much a monster as Akio.  No one wanted to save her, so she took away the Prince so he couldn't save anyone.  The world called her a Witch and she became one.  She rejected the world that hurt her, essentially saying, "Who needs you, anyway?"; she choose to hate it instead.

Subjectively, she tells us herself: she locked away her heart believing she wouldn't feel any more pain.  She was wrong, but the pain she feels as the Rose Bride is apparently preferable to the alternative.  She certainly feels she is too far down her chosen road to ever turn back.  That, more than anything, is why she doesn't think Utena can save her.  For one thing, she doesn't trust anyone--she could hardly accept that Utena would go through the fires of hell to prove her sincerity.  Anthy is incapable of putting her heart at risk by trusting Utena to that extent; she's been "heartless" for too long.  But even if Anthy were to accept or suspect that Utena's dedication was complete, that wouldn't be enough.  Utena is naïve and doesn't know anything about the real world, or about what Anthy really is.  From Anthy's point of view, Utena is an object of worthy of scorn for being so easily deceived and used.  Anthy cares about Utena, though, and so she pities her instead and makes a few attempts to dissuade Utena from dueling.  These attempts are lackluster, because subconsciously Anthy has always had some small hope that someday someone would try to save her, even if she didn't realize it.  Consciously, Anthy feels she cannot be saved, and certainly not by Utena.  This is distorted thinking, but accurate to Anthy's situation.

Anthy's relationship with Akio exemplifies every emotionally warped sentiment common to abuse victims.  Sexually abused children tend to become overly sexualized.  They often become promiscuous at a young age.  Emotionally abused children have a tendency to be passive-aggressive.  Physically abused children often end up in physically abusive relationships.  All abused children have a tendency to get stuck in loops of abuse and inappropriate attachments.  This is what Anthy's relationship with Akio is like.  The truth of this doesn't cast Akio as an evil villain hurting Anthy as an innocent victim.  Anthy is an active participant in everything that goes on at Ohtori and in everything she does with Akio.  The unhealthy attachment goes both ways.  However, Anthy's warped emotional development causes her to make choices that only hurt her more and push her further into her coffin.

That coffin symbolizes Anthy's death wish.  Not only is she killing herself figuratively inside with the choices she makes, she has a core of self-loathing.  That is the reason she tries to kill herself by jumping off of the tower.  She wouldn't have died, since she seems to be immortal, but her guilt over her deception of Utena created a depth of the despair that drove her to jump.  It's impossible to guess how many times she may have tried something similar in her early days at Ohtori. 

Anthy's suicide attempt was also an effective way for her to tell Utena that Anthy has spent her entire life trying to run away from pain.  Everything Anthy has done, everything that she has made of herself--Witch, Rose Bride--has been a misguided attempt to stop hurting.  Anthy tried her best to become a person who cares for and needs no one, who has no conscience, and who has no precious dreams.  She tried her best to become "a doll with no heart" who could feel no pain.  Acting the part made her so numb inside most of the time that she had to believe it worked.  But the truth is that she's only torturing herself further, creating more to regret.  If Anthy ever had the courage to step out of her coffin and face the world, to take a risk, she would have a chance to become whole.

Anthy's personality, her thinking, and her emotional development have been warped beyond credible recognition by the suffering she's gone through.  What Utena does for Anthy in her persistence is invaluable.  Utena struggled through most of the same pain as Anthy, without retreating, just to ask Anthy not to be afraid. 

It's notable that the bells toll when Anthy leaves Ohtori.  This very relevant to the meaning of the series; the bells, so far as we see, did not toll to signify the end of the duel Revolution until that moment.  I like to think that the last duel is only over when Anthy takes that final step out of Ohtori.