The Beast in the Closet: Interrogating the Trauma of Sibling Incest in Emma Donoghue’s Neo-Victorian Novel The Wonder

Emma Donoghue’s neo-Victorian novel The Wonder (2016) is a remarkable exploration of the Victorian era’s indifference towards the issues of woman and child safety against the heinous crimes of sexual abuse. The horror of sibling incest, which eventually develops the sense of guilt within the protagonist and gradually isolates her from the entire extrinsic world, has been taken into consideration for the analysis of the unusual narratives of tremendous shock and trauma that the novel enterprises. The paper examines incest as a trope for inflicting everlasting trauma and seeks to locate if amelioration is at all achievable for the abused ‘body’. The intended study further interrogates the placid indifference of the contemporaneous behavioural patterns of the societal institutional bodies of family, religion, and law, while encountering the forever forbidden taboo of incest.

Die Strafbarkeit inzestuöser Handlungen zwischen Geschwistern in Deutschland und Liechtenstein

The thesis examines the criminal liability requirements for sibling incest in Germany and Liechtenstein. Delivering the first ever interpretation of the Liechtenstein statute (which is unique in this form), the author breaks new ground. In addition, the explores whether the German sibling incest prohibition still has a place in German criminal law at all after the 2015/2016 sexual criminal law reforms - and whether there might even be room for improvement. The author comes to the conclusion that a fundamental reform of the German offence is needed in order to achieve a more effective protection of sexual self-determination; to this end, he presents a concrete proposal for a new statute.

Are moral norms rooted in instincts? The sibling incest taboo as a case study

According to Westermarck’s widely accepted explanation of the incest taboo, cultural prohibitions on sibling sex are rooted in an evolved biological disposition to feel sexual aversion toward our childhood coresidents. Bernard Williams posed the “representation problem” for Westermarck’s theory: the content of the hypothesized instinct (avoid sex with childhood coresidents) is different from the content of the incest taboo (avoid sex with siblings)—thus the former cannot be causally responsible for the latter. Arthur Wolf posed the related “moralization problem”: the instinct concerns personal behavior whereas the prohibition concerns everyone. This paper reviews possible ways of defending Westermarck’s theory from the representation and moralization problems, and concludes that the theory is untenable. A recent study purports to support Westermarck’s account by showing that unrelated children raised in the same peer groups on kibbutzim feel sexual aversion toward each other and morally oppose third-party intra-peer-group sex, but this study has been misinterpreted. I argue that the representation and moralization problems are general problems that could potentially undermine many popular evolutionary explanations of social/moral norms. The cultural evolution of morality is not tightly constrained by our biological endowment in the way some philosophers and evolutionary psychologists believe.

Incestuous Behavior In Virginia Cleo Andrews’ Flowers In The Attic And Tabitha Suzuma’s Forbidden

This study aims to give more understanding about incestuous behaviour especially in Virginia Cleo Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic and Tabitha Suzuma’s Forbidden. There are three focuses of the study; they are (1) how incest described in those novels, (2) what the causing factors of incest, and (3) what the impact of it. In answering the first question, incest on its features can be classified into three types; they are based on the offenders, the motivation, and the way of treating. For the second question, this study is analysed trough two parts. The first part is based on the condition before that incest happened and for the second part is based on the psychoanalysis theory by Karen Horney. In her theory, she explains about the childhood experience and neurotic needs that are related in finding the possible causing factors of incest as the focus of this study. Then, for the third question, the possible effects of sibling incest such as; trauma, isolated on social sanction, sexual aversion disorder, and other psychological problems. The result of this study has been found that sibling incest which is happened in those novels is driven by both sides of the offenders. What they do are on their mutual desire and willingness. And the dysfunctional family that they face also really influences their psychology. In Forbidden, it is found that there are two motivations that influence Lochan and Maya to do sibling incest, they are; affection and aggression while in Flowers in the Attic, there are three motivations that are found, they are; affection, eroticism and aggression. For the second question, this research reveals that there are three causing factors of sibling incest that are happened in both novels, they are; dysfunctional family, between age peers, and law of homogamy. Not only that, from the findings, it is also found that all of the offenders experienced the child abuse and neglect in their childhood. They also get the emotional maltreatment from their parents. Their childhood experiences then shape their personality and it deals with the psychological problems which are influenced by the neurotic needs that they seek. The third question is about the impact of sibling incest towards the offenders’ life. And it is found that all of the offenders blame themselves for everything that has happened in their lives, even one of those offenders Lochan decides to commit suicide

Reinventing the barbarian: Electra, sibling incest, and twentieth-century Hellenism

Since Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra in 1903, numerous dramatic versions of the Electra story have given the heroine a sexually charged relationship with her brother, or even her sister. Despite being an international phenomenon, predating Jung’s coinage of the ‘Electra complex’ by a decade and enduring through more than a century of artistic and institutional trends, this trope has received little scholarly attention. Since the appearance of sibling incest in adaptations of the Electra plays, scholars from multiple disciplines have even begun to read intimations of incest in the ancient dramatic texts. This article will consider the aetiology of a motif that resists being attributed to a single cause.

Having other-sex siblings predicts moral attitudes to sibling incest, but not parent-child incest

Moral opposition to incest is thought to play an important role in preventing inbreeding. Some researchers have proposed that moral opposition to sibling incest is greater for individuals who have other-sex siblings. Empirical evidence for this claim is mixed, however. Consequently, we compared moral opposition to both third-party sibling and third-party parent-child incest in participants with other-sex siblings only (N=313) and participants with own-sex siblings only (N=269). Having other-sex siblings predicted moral attitudes to sibling, but not parent-child, incest. These results support the proposal that moral opposition to sibling incest is sensitive to aspects of family structure, specifically the sex of siblings.

‘Our close but prohibited union’: Sibling incest, class and national identity in Iain Banks’s The Steep Approach to Garbadale (2007)

The work of Iain Banks has been prominent in exploring the crossing of different kind of borders: national, aesthetic and generic, ontological, gender and class to name but a few. Banks has also been part of a wider preoccupation in contemporary Scottish writing to do with inhabiting border zones, where the border ceases to be an idealised geometric line with almost no width or physical extension, and instead broadens to become a site that one can reside in, the ground against which the figure emerges. The Bridge, along with The Crow Road (1992) forms the background of the chapter. This chapter will illuminate how The Steep Approach to Garbadale’s continuation of and departure from the border explorations and reflections on national identity of his earlier books is rendered through the crucial deployment of the motif of sibling incest in the novel.

Stepchildren, Half-Siblings, and the Illegitimate

High mortality rates meant that many families lost a parent while the children were still young. This chapter explores the concerns of bereaved women and men deciding whether to remarry, and of children anticipating the arrival of a step-parent. Many families included a stepmother or stepfather, half-siblings or step-siblings, bringing new issues of sibling rivalry. Young children faced the possibility of neglect, cruelty, and the alienation of their own parent’s affections. Older children, especially in propertied families, worried about the threat to their inheritances. In practice, reconstituted families sometimes bonded very well and many coped adequately, but a minority ended in disaster. The chapter examines all these categories, including situations where the children became caught up in conflicts between husband and wife. There were other kinds of irregular families, too, and the chapter ends by exploring the situation of illegitimate half-siblings, and the issue of sibling incest.