Gothic Tropes: Incest

One of the defining features of Gothic literature is that it engages with the taboo—those subjects and behaviors so far outside the accepted norms of society that to even mention or hint at them stirs up fear and anxiety. Exactly what is considered taboo varies from culture to culture and changes over time, but one of the strongest taboos that you’ll find in almost every culture (although often defined differently) is that of incest. Sexual relations between family members are in many places prohibited by law and by religious code, in addition to being against social custom. But perhaps more so than any other crime, incest has the tendency to arouse strong feelings of disgust and discomfort. It is precisely these emotions—along with shock and horror—that writers of Gothic literature have sought to induce by including incest in their fiction.

Incest has been a core trope of the Gothic from its very beginnings with the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764). In this novel, the threat of incestuous rape is the chief danger from which the heroine seeks to defend herself. At the opening of the story, Isabella is engaged to marry the young prince Conrad, but her bridegroom is killed before the nuptials can take place. Conrad’s father, Manfred, becomes obsessed with producing an heir and decides to put aside his wife and marry his son’s young fiancée instead. Though Manfred and Isabella are not related by blood, Manfred’s desires are depicted in the story as incestuous, since Isabella is already considered a member of the family through her engagement to Conrad. When Manfred discusses his intentions with Friar Jerome, the friar declares “thou art warned not to pursue the incestuous design on thy contracted daughter.” At another point, Isabella exclaims that “divine and human laws forbid” her union with Manfred, and that moreover she would do nothing to hurt Manfred’s wife, Hippolita, whom she regards as “my own mother.” Indeed, it becomes clear that divine law is on Isabella’s side, as several supernatural events conspire to prevent Manfred from accomplishing his aim. Thus, more than simply the unwanted attentions of a man, it is the specter of incest that serves as the bogey-monster chasing Isabella through the castle.

Another prominent early work of Gothic literature approaches the topic from a different angle. In The Monk (1796), Matthew Lewis uses a graphic depiction of incestuous rape to shock and horrify his readers. Unlike in The Castle of Otranto, the villain of The Monk is unaware that the object of his desire is a relation. But as in the classic tale of Oedipus, this unintentional incest has disastrous consequences. At the beginning of the story, Ambrosio is a devout and virtuous monk, but he is seduced by the sorceress Matilda and joins her in practicing black magic. With the help of Matilda’s dark arts, Ambrosio plots to rape the beautiful Antonia. He fails in his first attempt when interrupted by her mother Elvira, whom he murders. But unlike Walpole, Lewis does not give his heroines happy endings. Ambrosio ultimately succeeds in raping Antonia and then kills her. At the end of the novel, when Ambrosio is on trial before the Inquisition he signs away his soul to the devil in exchange for being delivered from his torturers. But even Lucifer seems disgusted by the depravity to which Ambrosio has sunk. In a grand speech, Lucifer reveals to the monk the true extent of his crimes: “That Antonia whom you violated, was your Sister! That Elvira whom you murdered, gave you birth! Tremble, abandoned Hypocrite! Inhuman Parricide! Incestuous Ravisher! Tremble at the extent of your offences!” The Devil then throws Ambrosio off a cliff and leaves him to die slowly. Though committed unknowingly, the incest (alongside the added taboo of matricide) in this story represents the most extreme depths of sin to which the formerly virtuous monk has been brought, making him essentially the evilest villain imaginable.

The trope of incest was perhaps most famously employed two centuries later in V. C. Andrews’s 1979 Gothic novel Flowers in the Attic. While previous iterations of this trope depicted incest purely as the purview of villains, Andrews explores the idea of (mostly) consensual incest between protagonists. Flowers in the Attic begins with the death of Mr. Dollanger in a tragic car accident. His wife, Corinne, brings their four children to stay with their grandparents at Foxworth Hall. However, the children are kept hidden and locked in the attic. The secrecy turns out to be due to the fact that Corinne’s husband was her half-uncle, and her father will not accept the children from this incestuous union. Meanwhile, incest seems to run in the family as the older two children, Cathy and Chris, develop an attraction to each other. Things only get more uncomfortable from there. Flowers in the Attic is a particularly controversial novel, but its continued popularity goes to show that taboos such as incest are not merely a source of fear but can also be a source of fascination.

The recent Guillermo del Toro film Crimson Peak is perhaps the pinnacle example of this trope. It continues the tradition of associating incest with Gothic villains, but rather than making it a symbol of their moral degradation, it depicts the relationship in a more sympathetic light much like V. C. Andrews. In the film, Baronet Thomas Sharpe marries the recently orphaned American heiress Edith Cushing and brings her to live with him and his sister in their estate, Allerdale Hall. But when she arrives, Edith does not get the happily ever after she’d hoped for. Viewers less familiar with the Gothic genre may be surprised and distressed by the revelation that not only is Thomas a villain, he and his sister Lucille are secretly lovers. But including this classic trope is merely one of the many ways in which Crimson Peak pays homage to the Gothic tradition.

Have you read any other Gothic novels that feature the trope of incest? What other tropes would you like to see me discuss on the blog? Let me know in the comments!

If you’d like to read more about Gothic tropes, see my posts on: Unreliable Narrators; Creepy Housekeepers; Absent Mothers; Doppelgangers; The Evil, Exotic East; and Madness.