Incest in Literature

The Issue

In literature, incest, the sexual union between family members, has been associated with the desire to do evil (incest being evil in most cultures), with a wish to revolt against taboo or law, or with a desire to achieve the most intimate of all possible connections with another being (incest between twins being an example). Many literary works, beginning with mythology and the Bible, depict incestuous relationships, and not always with censure; however, in general incest has been regarded with horror.

History

Historically, the incest theme in literature has varied less in its depiction than in its moral subtexts. Incestuous marriages were commonplace in writings describing the lives of the gods of ancient peoples. Isis and Osiris, gods of the Egyptians, were brother and sister before they were husband and wife—a situation duplicated by the Grecian gods’ incestuous couplings. Further, the literary actions of the gods set a standard for human actions; the Oedipus myth is based on the desire for incestuous union. In the Old Testament, various of God’s chosen become involved in incestuous unions; Lot with his daughters and Abraham with his half sister, among others.

Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Tyrannus (c. 429 b.c.e.) has been central in incest literature. Oedipus kills his father and marries Jocasta, his mother—each act having been predicted by an oracle and performed without knowledge or suspicion of kinship. In the literature of the medieval period and during the Renaissance, the incest theme is occasionally present, but it was not until John Ford’s drama ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629?) was performed that it was treated by a serious writer in the English language.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the theme of incest was uncommon, although the Marquis de Sade did mention it briefly among many other vices. It was primarily the nineteenth century that drew upon incest themes in serious literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Alice Doane’s Appeal” and Herman Melville’s Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities (1852) return to familial horror, depicting the grotesque and the macabre. What constitutes incest has varied over time. In Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814), a family disapproves when a daughter elopes, disowns a daughter who leaves her idiotic husband for a man she loves, and rejoices when a son marries a sickly first cousin. A family in the twenty-first century would probably react differently.

The twentieth century brought fervor to the depiction of incest, as seen in W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Book-Bag” (1932), in which separated siblings relate to each other as man and woman rather than brother and sister. This work also portrays the conflict in which one character wishes to continue the relationship while the other does not. Virginia Cleo (V. C.) Andrews has written numerous works solely concerned with the erotic in family ties: Flowers in the Attic (1979), My Sweet Audrina (1982), and Heaven (1985) are examples.

Playwright Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) depicts frustrated incestuous passions that result in tragedy. Erskine Caldwell’s novel God’s Little Acre (1933) tells of incestuous passions in a family of Southern farmers, which lead to violence. William Faulkner, another Southern writer, also presents the hateful complexities arising from incest, including interracial incest, in his novels about the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. An example is the McCaslin family, which includes a son resulting from the union of cousins, one white and one black.

In 1996, George R. R. Martin published the first in what would become his hugely popular A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones. In this fantasy novel about the clashes between several noble houses in the fantastic land of Westeros, it is established that, like in earlier times, the members of the former ruling Targaryen family had long practiced incest, often marrying brothers and sisters, to preserve the bloodline and the family's control over the land's powerful dragons. Additionally, it is revealed that two main characters, twins Jaime and Cersei Lannister, are engaging in an incestuous relationship. In 2018's prequel Fire & Blood, Martin further explores the incestuous history of the Targaryens.

Implications for Identity

Since ancient times in the West, incest has generally been regarded as an abhorrence to be avoided and severely punished. Taboos are compelling themes for literature ancient and modern. For Sophocles, people’s lives were rigidly determined by fate; even warnings of what may lie ahead cannot divert one from the path along which one is doomed to travel. In Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, love between a brother and a sister is presented as an example of the helplessness of humans before fate. The siblings’ reverie is fatal and irresistible. The Renaissance play is as fatalistic as Sophocles’ drama about Oedipus.

Unlike Oedipus, the brother and sister in Pierre are aware of their familial ties, although they have been separated from each other since early childhood. In Melville, there is familial awareness, with all the associated guilt that such awareness implies. In Sophocles, fate punishes the knowing and the unknowing equally. In literature that depicts couples who know of their family ties, there is often a theme of disorganization and social degeneration. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929), for example, tells of Quentin Compson’s repressed sexual passion for his sister, Caddy; the self-destructive guilt that his passion produces is a symbol for the general self-destructiveness of the culture of which Quentin is a part.

Often, then, incest may be seen as a symptom or a specific example of a general social ill. Oedipus learns of his incest as a result of an investigation into the decline of his kingdom; incest in Faulkner’s novels may be said to be indicative of the moral failures of the American South. Other works, such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), depict incest as an example of the moral failure of patriarchy.

Bibliography

Arens, W. The Original Sin: Incest and Its Meaning. Oxford UP, 1986.

Cory, Donald Webster. Violation of Taboo: Incest in Great Literature of the Past and Present. Julian Press, 1963.

Hall, Constance. Incest in Faulkner: A Metaphor for the Fall. U of Michigan P, 1986.

Kidd, James. "Fire & Blood, Game of Thrones Prequel, Sees George R.R. Martin Stick to Winning Formula of Incest, Dragons and Destruction." Review of Fire & Blood, by George R. R. Martin. South China Morning Post, 20 Nov. 2018, www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2174073/fire-blood-game-thrones-prequel-sees-george-rr-martin. Accessed 27 Aug. 2019.

Masters, R. E. L. Patterns of Incest. Julian Press, 1963.

Pollak, Ellen. Incest and the English Novel, 1684- 1814. Johns Hopkins UP, 2003. Pollack analyzes some of the literary depictions of incest, whether real or imagined in works by Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and other English novelists.

Rank, Otto. Language and Literature: The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend. Translated by Gregory C. Richter. The Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.