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Crimson Peak, by Nancy Holder

In 2015, director Guillermo del Toro released to the cinemas the movie Crimson Peak, staring Mia Wasikowska as Edith Cushing, Tom Hiddleston as Thomas Sharpe and Jessica Chastain as Lucille Sharpe. The film was a huge success, and shortly after its release, a official novelisation, written by Nancy Holder, was published.

Alongside the novelisation, an official art book, called Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness, has also been published, giving further information on the characters and the world. Sadly, I couldn't find it, so I can't pull anything that was shown there.

I must also confess I have never seen the movie. I've heard of it, of course, but I didn't know anything more than 'mysterious siblings recruit a rich young woman to live in a haunted house'. And the story does live to it's reputation as a modern day gothic: decaying house, ghosts, incest.... all the best aspects of the genre!

The novel begins with Edith Cushing attending her mother's funeral, who had died from black cholera. Three weeks after the burial, late one night, while Edith was in her house, she starts to feel a presence in the room. Terrified, she hides under her blankets, but feels a cold hand touch her. She turns and sees her mother's decaying corpse, who tells her: "Beware of Crimson Peak". Edith tells this to her friend, Alan, but Alan's sister, Eunice, overhears and spreads the gossip that Edith is crazy.

Years pass by and Edith writes a novel about ghosts and grief, which she attempts to get published, but is rejected, for the reviewer thinks it's romantic enough for a woman author. Meanwhile, Alan had gone to England to study medicine, and while Eunice was visiting him, she meets Baronet Thomas Sharpe, whom she quickly becomes attracted to, due to his title and perceived wealth. After Eunice returns to America, Thomas announces he'll have a business meeting there, but he's also visiting to pay court to Eunice, who is throwing a ball to receive him.

Edith is not interested in any of it, as she has no time for social events. After having her book rejected, she goes to her father's office, where she intends to type out her novel and try to send it under the guise of being a man. There, she meets a charming English man who is looking for someone to finance his invention, which is a machine to dig clay. He sees Edith's novel and gets interested on it, and while they talk, she learns that he is Eunice's baronet, Sir Thomas.

Thomas' idea is to use the machine to dig deeper into the Sharpe clay mine, which produced a deep red clay, but most mines had collapsed, so he hoped to use his machine to tap into new sources of clay and restore his family business. Edith's father, however, sees no prospect in Thomas, thinking him to be a spoiled noble-man and dismisses his request for founding, not willing to give him money to invest in something that no one believes will work.

"You have already tried—and failed— to raise capital in London, Edinburgh, Milan."

At home, Edith once more sees her mother's ghost, who warns again about "Crimson Peak". Before she can calm herself, there's a knock on the door and Thomas appears, wanting to talk to Edith. He invites her to the ball in Eunice's house. Edith tells him she doesn't want to go, but he insists further, having been taken by her wit and talent. She finally agrees to go with him and they walk into the party arm in arm, much to the disappointment of both Alan and Eunice, as Alan was in love with Edith and hoped to marry her.

In the party, we are introduced to Lucille, Thomas' older sister. She plays the piano as Thomas dances with Edith, sending jealous looks at the couple. Eunice is also outraged that her supposed suitor left her for Edith, but there's no changing Thomas' mind. Mr. Cushing is also unhappy with Thomas's attention towards Edith, and so hired a private detective to investigate him and his sister.

After the ball, Edith beings to spends most of her days with Lucille and Thomas, however, privately, Lucille tells Thomas she doesn't think Edith is the right woman for him, but she decides to let him have his way.

"He was different; this was different; this was not what they had agreed on. It was too bright out; she could not think. Trust was so hard to come by in this world. But of course she trusted Thomas. Who else was there?"

Alan makes a last effort to conquer Edith's heart, by showing her spectre photography, but Edith has made her mind and is just waiting for Thomas to propose, which she believes he will do soon, as Mr. Cushing's company board decided to finance his machine and he would return soon to England. Thomas himself is also hopeful to propose, having taken his sister's garnet ring to use as an engagement ring.

"Now as his sister moved apart from him, he felt a twinge of guilt, for he had not been entirely honest with her. He would give the ring to Edith, oh, he would, but not in the manner they had imagined. Not for that reason. Life was new for him. The sun had come out at last, and all those years in darkness—those secrets— were over."

Some of the narration of his point of view makes no sense now, but it will all become clear later. What matters is that Thomas doesn't intend from the start to do with Edith what he did to the others.

In the dinner celebrating the deal, Mr. Cushing presents Thomas with the information the private detective had found out and tells Thomas that he'll tell Edith if Thomas doesn't leave of his own volition. Having no choice, Thomas decides to break Edith's heart, telling her that her novel was stupid and that she was immature. She slaps him and runs to her bedroom, heartbroken.

The next morning, Mr. Cushing waits to be attended by his barber, but is attacked and has his head smashed in. Edith is unaware of this when she receives a note from Thomas telling her why he had said those awful things and begging for forgiveness. Edith does forgive him and decides that she's going to go after him before he leaves for England. She rushes to his hotel and his still there. Lucille has gone ahead, but Thomas had hopes to see Edith one last time. They kiss and he asks her to marry him, that they will find a way to make her father accept it.

Only that it's not needed, as Edith is then informed her father had passed from a fall. His official cause of death is listed as an accident, but Alan quickly becomes suspicious of it.

Despite the tragedy, Edith and Thomas go ahead with the engagement and have a quick wedding, followed by a short honey in London, before they move to Allerdale Hall, the Sharpe's ancestral home. Edith makes the plan to have her fortune moved from America to England, where she will the money to incest in Thomas' machine.

Their honeymoon is quite interesting, because, not only they don't consummate the marriage, but Thomas keeps mentioning Lucille all the time, no matter what they were doing.

"They had not shared the marriage bed as yet. She was so grateful that Thomas had respected her mourning—and yet, she was ready to be a proper wife to him."

"Indeed, they had listened to a Chopin program, and Thomas had remarked that Lucille would have loved it. He had spoken often of his sister during their excursions, and Edith had been touched by his devotion to her."

When they arrive at Allerdale, Edith finds the home to be decrepit and sinking into the mines below. The signs that there's something wrong going on are quite evident. Thomas's servant, Finlay, says the following upon meeting Edith:

"'Finlay, this is my wife.' 'I know, I know, milord. You’ve been married a while.'"

Which Edith dismisses as dementia. Then, as she waits for Thomas to fetch Lucille, she see the shadow of a woman entering the elevator that leads from the house to the mine. When Lucille shows up, she and Thomas dismiss the sight by saying that the elevator often moves on it's own. Edith also tells Lucille about her honeymoon, and notices her sister in law seems quite jealous of it.

"She spoke stiffly, clearly a bit jealous of their fine time. But one went on a honeymoon with one’s bride, not one’s sister. Surely Lucille understood that."

Then Edith asks Lucille for the house keys, as she's the new lady of the house, but Lucille is reluctant to hand them to Edith, telling her that the house is dangerous and it's best for her to not go exploring and opening doors for now.

"Lucille was possessive of everything… including her brother. Edith could not understand why Lucille wanted to remain the mistress of Allerdale Hall."

Edith retreats to her room to lay down, and Lucille complains to Thomas about Edith's intentions with her ghost stories and they bicker over the fact the Thomas still hadn't got Edith to officially sign over her fortune to him, which he promises will happen soon. Lucille is pleased and says that she'll get rid of Edith as soon as the transaction is done.

Thomas prepares Edith a tea to make her feel better, but Edith complains of it being bitter, but Thomas insists that it will be good for her health. The kiss, but Thomas leaves before it can advance any further, he retreats and Edith quickly falls asleep. All the while, Lucille watched from the keyhole.

"The sister spied through the keyhole in the door to their bedroom. She watched her brother refuse to perform his husbandly duties. She smiled and moved away."

When Edith wakes up in the middle of the night, Thomas is not there. Hearing noises, she picks a candelabra and leaves the bedroom to try to find her husband. As she explores the house, she is lead towards wax cylinders, which could be using to play sounds in a phonograph. As she examines them, a blood red ghosts appears and Edith goes running, the ghost chasing her. She gets in the elevator and ends up on the mines, where she finds many chests and vats. One of the chests has the initials Enola S., and Edith wonder if Enola is a relative of Thomas. The chest is however locked and she's unable to open it. Then a noise starts coming from the clay vats, and Edith rushes back to her bedroom.

Meanwhile, in America, Alan is suspicious of Thomas, as he watches all of Edith's things be sold to sent the money to her new husband. His suspicion grows when he finds out that Mr. Cushing had wrote a check fro Thomas on the day he died. Talking with Mr. Cushing's lawyer, Alan discovers about the hired private investigator and goes to interview him about his findings. The investigator tells Alan that not only was Thomas already married, but also his mother had died in mysterious circumstances

After seeing the ghost, Edith wakes up in bed, with Thomas by her side. She hears a piano playing and goes to check it, finding Lucille sitting in the a bench playing a song that she tells Edith she used to play to Thomas when they were little. She also tells a bit more of their childhood, how she and Thomas had been confined to the attic by their mother, who didn't want to have to deal with them. How very Flowers in the Attic of them.... Lucille also tells Edith how she likes to have her mother's portrait hanging on the walls, even though the woman had abused her and her brother.

"'Thomas wanted us to take it down. But I didn't want to,' Lucille said. 'I like to think she can see us from up there. I don't want her to miss anything we do.' Was that a smirk? Lucille smiled at the painting as if she and that evil-looking woman were sharing a private joke."

What is Lucille to smug that her mother is watching? An incestuous love affair? Yeah, it's a incestuous love affair, that Mrs. Sharpe found out about in life and disapproved. So now Lucille is happy that her mother is forced to watch it continuing... Lucille doesn't know about the Allerdale ghosts, but she is right in assuming her mother is watching.

As Edith explores the library, Lucille shows her some books that Mrs. Sharpe once had ordered from afar. One of them, as Lucille demonstrates, shows a Japanese couple having sex. Edith is horrified at them, but Lucille says it's fine, especially now that Edith has had sex. Edith shakes her head, saying that they haven't consummated the marriage, at which Lucille brightens up.

Later in the day, as Thomas works on his machine, Edith makes him tea, but he's immediately put off, asking her which tin she used. While Edith thinks that maybe she can have done the wrong tea for the afternoon, my mind immediately went for 'one of them is poisoned', specially because before, the narration made a big deal of Lucille and Thomas taking tea for Edith using the red tin.

Before he even drinks his tea, Thomas gets burned in the machine steam and as Edith bandages him, he tells her that the hill is nicknamed "Crimson Peak" among the locals because during the winter the red clay stains the snow. Edith is horrified, recalling her mother's ghostly warning.

As Edith further explores the house, she finds in the attic many tinkers that Thomas had build to entertain Lucille during the years they were confined there. They kiss and begin to raise her skirts, but they are interrupted by Lucille, who has brought tea.

That night, Edith wakes up sick and as she rushes to the bathroom, she continues to see things in the house, this time it's a ghost with a meat cleaver stuck on it's skull, parting it in half, that warns her to leave the house. She goes after Thomas, who once again wasn't in their bed, and when she finally finds him she tells him that she had seen the ghost of his mother. She begs Thomas to leave the house with her, but Lucille appears and dismisses Edith as insane, serving her more tea. After Edith is asleep again, Lucille confronts Thomas, asking him how could Edith know about their mother had died, but Thomas has no idea.

The next day, Edith and Thomas goes into town, so Edith can get some fresh air. In the post office, Edith receives a letter from Milan addressed to E. Sharpe, along with some letters from her lawyer. Before they can return to Allerdale, a storm begins and they get trapped in town. Having no where else to go, they decide to spend the night in an inn, where they finally make love.

When they return to the house on the next day, Lucille is in panic, worried about why Thomas had been away the whole night. Maybe thinking he had left her for Edith, not intending to return. She gets even more agitated when Edith tells her they consummated the marriage.

"Her distress was bewildering. She could not be surprised that Thomas had at last asserted his husbandly privilege, and yet it seemed almost as if Lucille thought she should have been consulted on the matter."

While they talk, Edith notices that Lucille has a key that is labelled as Enola and surreptitiously slips it away while Lucille makes more tea. Edith also opens the Italian letters, but it's in... well, Italian, and so she has to go to the library to find a dictionary. As she translates, she sees from the window that Thomas had made his machine work, but instead of going out to congratulate him, she decides to go to the mines to open Enola's chest.

In the chest, she finds a phonograph that she decides to use to play the wax cylinders she found earlier. She picks it up, but starts to hear a noise coming from the clay vats again. She goes to investigate it and, while she finds nothing, she goes drops the key. She recovers it, but it's stained with blood red clay and she can't get it off. Which is definitively a reference to Bluebeard, in which the wife drops the key to Bluebeard's murder room and he finds out by the stain in it.

Outside, Thomas has called Lucille to celebrate his success. But Lucille turns sour when Thomas mentions how he wishes Edith could see his success.

"'Oh, if only Edith could see it,' he blurted. The words were out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. Lucille pulled away. She stared at him in disbelief. 'Edith?' Her voice shook. 'I did this with you. For you. I did it!' He put his arms around her again, trying to recapture the moment, to backtrack. Mentioning Edith at this life-changing moment was a stupid blunder. He never wanted to hurt Lucille, ever. Nor Edith, he thought wildly, panicking. Neither of them. 'Of course we did,' he placated her. 'We did this together. No one else.'"

Lucille is not placated by his words, and as Thomas goes back to his machine, she notices that Enola's key is missing. She runs back to the house and finds Edith, who is laying in bed, trying to hide her discovery. Lucille offers to make Edith some tea, which she accepts, and while Lucille is away, Edith places the stained key back into place, which obviously Lucille notices.

That night, Thomas visits Lucille in her room and notices that there's something wrong. They play music and dance, but the atmosphere is tense.

"Her eyes glistened with need and fear, and he remembered all that she had done for him. What she had endured for him. He had to be here for her. It was their pact."

"Lucille was gazing into his eyes and he could feel her weaving her spell around him. How old had he been when he had first surrendered? She was incredibly strong-willed, far more so than he. That was both a blessing and a curse. Lucille had kept them alive. Now they would begin to thrive. She had worked out the plan and except for a few unexpected hiccups—bumps in the night, literally—it was going well. They danced. She was his most perfect partner."

Meanwhile, Edith plays the phonograph and hears from three women: Pamela Upton, London, 1887. Margaret McDermott, Edinburgh, 1893. Enola Sciotti, Milan, 1896. The locations make her recall the places where her father had said Thomas had tried to raise capital. When she plays the recordings, she discover that they were Thoma's previous wife and, in Enola's recording, the hears the crying of a baby.

She shuffles through some pictures of the women that she had also found, and notices how in all of them, they are drinking tea. Just how Edith does. She comes to the realisation that the tea is poisoned. Also in a photo, there's a dead child.

It all becomes too much and Edith rushes out of the house, but she faints and is taken back inside by Lucille, who also makes more tea. Thomas, however, tells Edith not to drink the tea, but it doesn't really matter: the porridge he feeds Edith has also, unbeknown to him, poisoned. When Edith falls asleep again, Thomas leaves her side, unable to watch her die. He had always been absent when Lucille killed the other wives.

Thomas doesn't want Edith to die, but Lucille tells Thomas that they have no option, that Edith knows too much. Thomas is not brave enough to oppose Lucille, not when she been been whipped and beaten by their parents in his place, and she had always taken care of him.

"They had struck a bargain, vowing never to be separated. And in so many words, to kill anyone who tried to force them apart. Though he had been but eight years old when that pledge had been made, the memory of that day had never left him. It had haunted him all his life."

We get a flashback from their childhoods, when Lucille convince Thomas to sneak into the library to see the pornographic books, the same she showed Edith. Their father had founded them there and Lucille threw herself at him, to make sure that Thomas could scape unnoticed. Later, she blames Thomas for being hurt, telling him that if he hadn't asked to see the books, nothing would have happened. Thomas is confused, because it hadn't been him to suggest going to the library, but eventually accepts Lucille's version of events. In the years that followed, Lucille drugged their father and then killed their mother with a meat cleaver.

"She kissed his tears away. They clung to each other, orphans who could have been freed by the deaths of their nearly demonic parents, but were too haunted instead. Stripped of everything but darkness. Too late, too late for light?"

Back in the present day, Thomas notices he is actually in love with Edith, but he doesn't knows what to do. He has no chance to make this mind, as Edith, wandering the house in the dark looking for him in the night, is led to the attic by Enola's ghost, where she finds Lucille and Thomas in a romantic embrace. Lucille notices the intrusion and attacks Edith, who runs.

"'It's all out in the open now,' Lucille said triumphantly, turning her around to face her. Edith’s back slammed against the gallery railing. 'No need to pretend. This is who I am. This is who he is!'"

While the women fight, Lucille tries to ring the garnet ring from Edith's finger. Edith notices her jealousness and shouts that Lucille is not Thomas' real sister, but his wife. With a smug smile, Lucille replies that she is his sister and pushing Edith from the balcony, causing Edith to injure her leg.

To everyone's surprise, Alan arrives in England, convinced that Lucille is actually Thomas's wife and that Edith is in great danger. He tries to talk to Edith alone, but Lucille attacks him. She then hands the knife to Thomas, asking him to at least once in his life do something. Thomas agrees, but whispers to Alan to show him where to make a non-fatal stabbing, before taking him the basement, telling Lucille he finished the kill.

"Her brother, her beloved, her soul mate had torn his way out of his cocoon. Through the cut he had sliced in McMichael’s body, he had emerged a beautiful, black-winged moth."

Lucille drags Edith back inside, so Edith can sign the papers transferring her money to Thomas. While Edith refuses, Lucille taunts her, by telling Edith that Thomas never loved her, that he never loved any of his wives. Edith asks about the baby she heard in Enola's recording, and Lucille tells her that the baby was not Enola's, since Thomas never had consummated any marriage before. The baby belonged to Lucille and Thomas, and at first Enola had agreed to care of it, which is why Lucille allowed Enola to live longer than originally planned, but once Lucille realised the child was an abomination, she killed both.

"'Lucille whirled on her. "What vulgarians you Americans are. The marriages were for money, of course—quite acceptable for people like us, expected, even, for generations. But the horror?' And now the madness overtook her again. 'The horror was for love.'"

"All the love Thomas and I ever knew was from one another. And the only world that kind of love can live in is this one. These rotting walls. In the dark. Hiding."

When Lucille confesses to having killing Edith's father, Edith freaks out and stabs Lucille in the chest with the pen, before trying to run once more. Edith finds Thomas, who takes her to Alan, before deciding to go back to Lucille.

However, there's no appeasing Lucille, specially not when she notices that Thomas loves Edith. Heartbroken, she attacks and kills Thomas and then runs to the mines after Edith.

"'Is this how it ends?' the sister screamed in the throes of anguish. 'You love her? You love her?'"

Lucille finds Edith and screams that Edith is responsible for Thomas's death. The two women have a long fight that ends only when Edith, with the help of Thomas's ghost, plunges a shovel into Lucille. Edith then confesses her love for Alan and the two leave Allerdale Hall, with Edith having a new idea for a book.

I had heard to much about the movie and seem so many gifs of Lucille and Thomas that I expected their relationship to play a more central part to the story. I'm quite disappointed that in the end Thomas chose Edith, but I guess we couldn't allow the Byronic Hero to actually get an incestuous relationship....

Also, the novel makes a big deal of the manor be sinking in the hill. I kept expecting it to crumble doing the big showdown, but nothing happens. The house if still there in the end, and Lucille even gets to haunt it. I fully expected it to go all Usher.

#shipcest #proship #canon #sibcest #book review #crimson peak #nancy holder #lucille and thomas

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litcest · 12 days ago

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"Though It Were the Deadliest Sin to Love as We Have Loved": The Romantic Idealization of Incest, by Eugene Stelzig

A while back I got an ask about incest in the Romantic period and sadly, I had to tell the anon that I knew little about it. I have also covered William Wordsworth's relationship with his sister, which occurred during the Romantic period. In fact, William was an influential figure to the movement.

Then, @familyromantic sent me an article she thought I would like about that very topic, and, while it took me a while to get to it, I decided it's finally time to cover Romantic incest.

In the article, Eugene Stelzig explores how Romantic writers like Rousseau, Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron, Chateaubriand, the Shelleys, and Emily Brontë treated incest not merely as a sexual taboo, but as a symbol of emotional and spiritual intimacy, as well as a form of rebellion against societal norms. The theme of incest often comes along with that of childhood and death, elements which Stelzig ties to the authors' own lives, suggesting their personal struggles with identity, familial bonds, and social alienation shaped the way incest was portrayed in Romantic literature.

Stelzig begins by analysing the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom Stelzig highlights that had lost his mother a young child and proceded to have intense and complicated relationships with older women, as Rousseau himself writes in his autobiographical work Confessions, where he describes his relationship with the much older Madame de Warens. Although she was not his biological mother, she filled the role of one.

"More than a sister, more than a mother, more than a friend, more even than a mistress."

Rousseau, despite lusting after Warens, feels a deep shame after having sex with her, commenting that it felt if he had "committed incest".

Goethe presents incestuous undertones across several works: in The Sorrows of Young Werther the main character is infatuated with Lotte, who acts mother-like towards him; in Faust, the titular character's affair with Gretchen, who is only thirteen, can be interpreted as being a less taboo stand in for father-daughter incest, which Faust often referring to her as "child"; in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, one of the characters is explicitly said to be the product of brother-sister incest, and the relationship between Wilhelm and Mignon alternates between having familial and romantic tones.

More prominently, in Goethe's authbiography Poetry and Truth, the other showcases the emotionally complex relationship between himself and his sister, Cornelia, who was only one year younger than him. Due to this small age difference, they were often "taken for twins" and matured together.

"That interest of youth; that amazement at the awakening of sensual impulses which clothe themselves in mental forms [...], all these the brother and sister shared and endured hand in hand."

When Goethe got his heart broken, it was Cornelia that consoled him and he compares it with confidants that become lovers, saying that "we both thought ourselves infinitely unhappy, and the more so, as, in this singular case, the confidants could not change themselves into lovers."

Stelzig then turns his attention to Wordsworth's relationship with his sister Dorothy. Through poetic and biographical evidence, Stelzig demonstrates how their bond bordered on romantic, with William calling Dorothy "my Love" in poems dedicated to her and Dororthy calling my "my Beloved" in her journals. Not only that but Dorothy's journals reveal a life daily intimacy, including acts such as her wearing William's wedding ring the night before his marriage. Their relationship suggests that emotional incest, idealised and unconsummated, became a way to reclaim their childhood, in which they had been forced apart.

"As in the case of Goethe and his sister, it is the function of a shared identity between siblings that has its deep roots in the experience of childhood: Dorothy's adult identification and living with William is a psychic restoration of the loving bonds of the Wordsworth family which had been traumatically sundered by the death of both parents and the sudden separation and dispersal of the five orphaned Wordsworth children."

Furthermore, in Tintern Abbey, William sees Dorothy as reflection of his past self. This is relevant for, in the Romantic conception, love was often seen as "idealized mirroring of the self in the other, the rarefied affinity of souls and the sublime merging of identities", something that can also be seen in Goethe's narration of his and Cordelia's teenage years.

This idea of sameness is central to Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, where Cathy famously declares, "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Since Cathy and Heathcliff were raised as siblings, Stelzig considers this a literary instance of what Goethe and Wordsworth talked about: a metaphysical union of the soul. Their relationship is intense, dramatic, and deeply co-dependent, shaped by their shared childhood and further intensified by the death of Mr. Earnshaw. Despite their profound bond, they are only united in death, being buried side by side.

In Byron's Manfred, Astarte never being explicitly told to be Manfred's sister, but it's clear to the audience that they had an incestuous bond, as Manfred calls their love "the deadliest sin" and also emphasises show similar they were, although he says she was more beautiful. The unnameable nature of their bond only calls more attention to it, leaving the audience to focus of what could be so terrible that the play refuses to say. Once again, there's a tragic tone to the story with Manfred being a suspect of Astarte's murder.

Stelzig then turns to the French author Chateaubriand, who approached the theme of incest by imagining a world in which it was socially acceptable. In Atala (1801), one character waxes lyrical about a mythical past, "those ineffable unions, when the sister was the bride of the brother, when love and fraternal friendship commingled in the same heart".

The story features the half-Indian Atala and her lover Chactas, who discover her Spanish father was also a father-figure to him, leading Chactas to exclaim, "O my sister! daughter of Lopez!" Despite not being blood related, or even having grown up together, that connection is enough for their love to be "quasi-incestuous". Atala never gives into the physical aspect of their attraction, as she had made chastity vows and eventually dies, hoping Chactas will convert to Christianity and join her for an eternal "reunion" in heaven.

As Stelzig puts it, Chateaubriand projects this ideal of sibling incest "backward in time into a post-Edenic marriage idyll, and forward in time into a perpetual embrace in the afterlife"... I'll be frank, the true meaning of Stelzig's words evade me, but I think it looked pretty. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

The theme of incest gets even more sensational in Chateaubriand's René (1802). In which the title character sees his sister, Amélie, as "the only person in the world I would have loved, the only person for whom my feelings were united with the tender memories of my youth". Stelzig notes this likely has biographical roots, with Amélie based on Chateaubriand's own sister, Lucile, whom he adored dearly, but more importantly: René is Chateaubriand's middle name. It's sure interesting how he shares a name with his incest leaning character.

When Amélie rushes to her suicidal-hinting brother, he receives her "in a kind of transport of the heart," and she kisses his forehead. René himself says, "she was almost a mother, she was something even more tender". They live in perfect harmony until Amélie realizes that she is sexually attracted to René, and gets ill. René at first doesn't understand what happens, but then he hears her confessing her "criminal passion" while becoming a nun. The story doesn't have a happy ending, with both of them dying while apart.

Afterwards, Stelzig brings in Percy Bysshe Shelley, who once wrote "incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical circumstance" (a quote which happens to be my most popular post). Indeed, Percy… Indeed! Stelzig highlights Shelley's essay "On Love," where Shelley talks about something without us that "thirsts after its likeness" and finding an "ideal prototype" or an "antitype", basically a twin flame whose nerves "vibrate with the vibrations of our own". It's clear why one might link those quotes to a incestous union, or at least to a spiritual incest: not related by blood, but by spirt.

In Shelley's poem Laon and Cythna (later toned down and retitled The Revolt of Islam because his publisher freaked out over a little sibling incest), Laon refers to his little sister's as "all I had/ To love in human life - this sister sweet". They were inseparable, with Laon describing her as "a shape of brightness... Like the bright shade of some immortal dream". In the revised version, the girl is Laon's friend, not his sister. (I'm just now noting that Laon is also the name of the male protagonist of Under the Pendulum Sun… the incestuous male protagonist. Oh Jeannette Ng, the genius you are!). Laon and Cythna's eventual sexual union is described as "Two disunited spirits when they leap In union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep".

Shelley's Epipsychidion, which Shelley himself called "an idealized history of my life and feelings", is all about longing for a soul sister, or as he puts it, his "heart's sister". He addresses her as "Spouse! Sister! Angel!" and declares, "I am not thine: I am part of thee", which echoes Catherine's line about Heathcliff. Stelzig notes how this affinity is grounded in childhood imagination: "There was a Being whom my spirit oft/ Met [...] In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn". The goal is this perfect union:

"We shall become the same, we shall be one Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? One passion in twin hearts".

This idea of twinhood gets so intense it borders narcissism, he wants to love himself, or better, a projection of himself. Stelzig mentions Shelley's The Cenci to show that not *all* incest was idealized by Romantics: Father-daughter incest was pretty much always depicted as a horror show. In the story, Count Cenci is a "paternal monstrosity" who rapes his daughter Beatrice to break down her will. She sees him as a "clinging, black, contaminating mist". It's all very tragic and horrible, and there's no idealization here – just pure depravity.

This brings us to Mary Shelley's novella Mathilda, which subverts the notion of paternal incest being horrific by sympathising with the characters. Stelzig argues that it "attempts to present the motif of father-daughter incest in a less-than-horrifying and almost attractive light". Apparently, Mary's own dad, William Godwin, thought the subject matter was so "disgusting and detestable" he told her not to publish it, and it didn't see the light of day for nearly 150 years, years after Mary's death.

Stelzig mentions that critics consider Mathilda to have autobiographical influences, perhaps reflecting Mary's attachment to Godwin, whom she called "my God" before meeting Percy Shelley. The novel might have been Mary working out some pretty deep feelings about her dad, after being inspired by Percy's take on father-daughter incest in The Cenci. I wonder if Percy knew what Mary wrote, and what he thought of it… Did he tell his wife he wanted a soul sister? Did she tell him she wanted her dad?

Mathilda is framed as deathbed confession, starting with the titular heroine promising to "unveil the mystery" of her "sacred horror," even comparing herself to Oedipus. Her mom died giving birth to her (which also happened to Mary), and her dad ditched her with an aunt. Despite this (or maybe because of this), Mathilda "bestowed on him all [her] affections," constantly gazing at his portrait and dreaming of their reunion where he'd say he loves her. And, wouldn't you know, Dad comes back when she's sixteen, and for a while, it's "Paradisaical bliss". But then an incestuous passion awakens in her father, as he begins to think of Mathilda as a replacement for her mother, and his wife: "her mother's spirit was transferred into her frame".

Interestingly, Mary Shelley shared her first name with her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who, as mentioned, died giving birth to Mary Shelley. When the father confesses his love to Mathilda, she freaks out and withdraws from him. The father, seeing her horrified reaction kills himself. Mathilda then becomes obsessively fixed on her dead father, whom she believes she will be reunited with in the afterlife:

"In truth I am in love with death... is it not my marriage dress? Alone it will unite me to my father when in an eternal mental union we shall never part".

Stelzig concludes that Mary Shelley's Mathilda, by trying to naturalize father-daughter incest was "more daring than her presentation (in Frankenstein) of the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth Lavenza, which is a variant of the Romantic sibling incest pattern" (in the original version, that is, not the revised 'they were cousins' version). Even though it doesn't openly break the taboo (there's no consummation and they both die), the story was still too disruptive of the social norms to be published at the time.

Overall, Stelzig's article shows how Romantic writers weren't just being shocking, they used incest (especially the sibling kind) as this symbol for ultimate connection, a kind of "spiritualized eros," often tied up with childhood innocence, identity, and a longing for a love that society just couldn't handle.

I do intend to cover these titles more in-depth when I have time. Also, this post has been a long time in the making, so I apologise if I repeat myself a lot throughout it.

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