What is This Secret Sin, This Untold Tale…?: The Representation of Incest in Early British Gothic Narratives

Various patterns of the representation of incest in the turn-of-the-19(superscript th) century British Gothic novels will be analyzed from a Foucauldian perspective in this paper. The Foucauldian model emphasizes the tension between two modes of familial organization-”alliance” and ”sexuality”- and this tension often occurs in representations of the modern nuclear family. In the 18(superscript th) century, the period when this clash between familial alliance and sexuality began, there was an acute anxiety about incest, which was represented in the Gothic novel with its wide range of scenarios. Some Gothic writers wavered between the modes of alliance and sexuality while others preferred to look back nostalgically at the traditional alliance-based model of the family. Some were so concerned about the potential confusion between domestic affection and erotic attachment in the newly-emergent nuclear family that they looked suspiciously at the sexual ”connections” of couples who were not blood kin but acted as if they were-the so-called ”familialized incest.” Domestic space-and how it is compartmentalized, controlled, and infiltrated-plays an important role in the way incest is imagined as haunting horror or unconscious wish. It will be argued that the incest of Early British Gothic fiction is above all a symptom or expression of the problem of meeting the contradictory demands of familial alliance and sexuality.