Anne Rice and Sexual Politics: The Early Novels by James R. Keller (2000)
semi-coherent thoughts n ramblings on louis & claudia’s multifaceted dynamic
claudia/louis emotional incest is so important 2 me, the same way the parentification of claudia by louis is part of her trauma too 🥲 one common place that emotional incest comes up is in Children of Alcoholics (COA) literature, and it is specifically between children of alcoholics & their non-alcoholic parent. i don’t think lestat is coded as an alcoholic, but i do think the volatility and control he exerts in s1 maps really closely onto the dynamics of the “alcoholic parent”, with louis as the “non-alcoholic parent” (imperfect terminology, there is still possible substance use by this parent, but they are seen & think of themselves as the less volatile one), and claudia as the “child” including as the parentified child and the adult child.
(also, preface to say that as i write this i try to use language in a way that reflects the internal thought process of parents & children in COA household dynamics but not as my actual thoughts/value judgements. when i say “survivors often think X of themselves” that is their internal reality which =/= external reality. no nuance novemeber better not come back to bite me on this one).
(second side tangent to say that COA lit as pop psychology is extremely of its time, coming abt in the late 70s/early 80s, a little bit before trauma theory fleshes its ideas out, coincides with a mainstream psychoanalysis boom, has a very American WASP dynamic to it. not saying it’s right or universally true just that it’s an interesting lens to think thru the Claudia/Louis relationship)
the broadstrokes dynamics of COA literature usually follow the lines of the non-alcoholic parent is enabling their alcoholic partner, staying bc they believe their partner will change, & thus enabling the abuse of the child by exposing their child to further volatility from the alcoholic parent. a recurring theme that comes up with adult children is stuff like “yeah, the violence was bad, but the really fucked up thing was always having my reaction to it minimised by the ‘good’ parent”. when louis asks claudia to “try to not provoke lestat” i literally JUMPED outta my skin, bc that is the CLASSIC non-alcoholic parent behaviour. we constantly see louis trying to minimise lestat’s abuse of claudia TO claudia through the guise of louis trying to peacekeep in their relationship!! but louis (likely bc he is trapped in his own dynamic of childhusband to Lestat’s fatherhusband) cannot fundamentally grasp that it is not an even playing field between parent and child — claudia regardless of her literal age in rue royale, is still physically and mentally/emotionally the child.
the non-alcoholic parent’s mininimisation of the child’s reactions is often rooted in 1) fear of the reaction provoking retaliation from the volatile parent, and simultaneously, 2) bc the non-alcoholic parent still struggles to fully comprehend & process the partner’s actions as abusive bc they are trying to mentally & emotionally protect themselves of this awareness through denial. if the non-alcoholic parent accepted their partner’s actions as abuse, likely the non-alcoholic parent would have to also confront the reality that their own parents/carers were abusive, and that is a load-bearing trauma they can’t unpack for the very reason that they are not in a safe environment to unpack it. the volatility of the alcoholic partner in the household makes it an unsafe space and thus impossible to process the trauma of the non-alcoholic’s own abusive childhood, and their inability to process the trauma of their own abusive childhood keeps them stuck in the alcoholic partner’s household. there is also often a recurring theme in COA lit that, just as a child would lack financial autonomy from their parent, the non-alcoholic partner lacks financial independence from their spouse despite being the “breadwinner” which prevents them from leaving safely. think “the wife goes to work but her paycheck goes into bank account with her husband’s name” like louis runs the Azalea but Rue Royale is Lestat’s house on the paperwork — there’s of course also the dynamic that this is the Jim Crow era American south so there’s layers on layers of implications for louis’ financial autonomy here.
louis probably doesn’t clock his own parents as abusive, but based on the small amt of info we have on how they treated him and paul, i feel comfortable betting they probably were. in fact, i would go so far as saying a huge underlying part of the louis/claudia dynamic is the de pointe du lac family intergenerational trauma. (something something, she is both claudia de pointe du lac and claudia de lioncourt bc she inherits both lineages of intergenerational family trauma lmao). back to Louis & the du pointe du lac family for a moment to say i read the explicit absence of the de pointe du lac patriarch in the show thus far as a deliberate choice to represent the gaps/absences in louis’ post-traumatic memory. everyone loves discussing who haunts the narrative ad nauseum, but it is the absence of the de pointe du lac patriarch, not the presence, which haunts the narrative. louis does not spend any time recollecting his father, likely because doing so would force louis to confront not only himself as father, but that his relationship with lestat as fatherhusband is fundamentally tied what louis lacks in his own relationship with his father.
there is the common saying that in order to survive an abusive household, a child will believe that parental abuse is love, and then carry this framework/image of abuse as love into their adult romantic relationships. abusive romantic relationships feel comforting because they feel familiar, the partner feels “safe” in the abusive relationship because they intuitively understand the patterns volatility, of walking on eggshells, of pleasing & appeasing their partner bc that is the role that was laid out for them early in life. the child’s very survival is predicated upon believing parental abuse is love because, psychologically, it is safety or death. the parent is the provider of material safety — food, shelter, support — which the child literally cannot fulfill for themselves because they are a child and without these needs fulfilled they will die. a child’s brain is hardwired for survival, and it can only think in absolute black & white terms, so it is either accept the abuse as love (and therefore safety) or face/comprehend the lack of safety and the enormity of death (through withholding essential conditions of survival) as a real threat within the household. the child’s brain is incapable of doing the latter, so it defaults to the former: “abuse is love” is the story the child’s brain tells itself in order to survive the abusive household, thereby also damning the child to recreate those dynamics in future romantic relationships. the child never really leaves the abusive household (the haunted house) bc it is inside them, they recreate it wherever they are.
(another side note to say i personally think abuse and love an co-exist and the presence of one does not negate the other, but again, speaking in simplified terms in order to be able to get the ideas across).
its also extremely telling that louis is, himself, the parentified child!! he is the “man” of the de pointe du lac house, charged with taking care of his mother, sister, and brother. i think it might have been the official podcast where one of the actors playing either louis or grace (?) says that they believe louis coveted grace’s dolls in secret as a child, because dolls were a thing denied to louis by the narrow acceptable standards of gender performance forced onto him through his upbringing. the dolls motif has literally never stopped revolving inside my mind because it has SO many facets:
louis as having to deny/suppress nurturing parental instinct to conform to gendered expectations
the “it’s chiffon, it has movement” is played for laughs, but louis and lestat are literally arguing over dressing claudia up like a doll (iwtv is literally so, so, so good at pulling off these moments which gesture to the fact that the abusive dynamics are there from literally day one, while also implicating the audience in laughing along with it)
the tvd “baby lulu” minstrel show costume (literally she’s “baby lu” as in BABY LOUIS, the homophone is inescapable)
doll as slang for sex worker, a la doll tearsheet in ben jonson’s the alchemist. though it may seem like a stretch, there are SO many early modern theatre references, it would be impossible for the writing team to write louis as a brothel owner not to be aware of this one. i have a longer essay in my thoughts about louis & pimping as an extension of louis & claudia dynamic but that would require 1mg of nuance on the topic of sex work from iwtv fans in no nuance november of all times
anyways before i drift too far away into doll metaphors, back to louis, claudia, and emotional incest in COA lit. the spouse can’t confide in their alcoholic partner emotionally (bc the alcoholic partner is volatile/absent/etc), so they seek out that emotional fulfillment through a relationship with the child (comfort, complicité in keeping secrets, etc). when claudia & louis team up against lestat, they might like to think of it as brother and sister vs. father, but it is also parent & child vs. other parent. louis builds his sense of identity around his relationship with claudia, its enmeshment up the wazoo (the period of grief when he literally becomes an empty nester bc she goes to university). louis’ you and me speech in s2e1? beautiful, heartbreaking, also once again louis reorienting everything in his life towards claudia (and the fallibility of this expressed through louis’ hallucinations of lestat’s ghost). claudia’s “you and fucking him! picked another one over me” speech? literal 10/10 gold dust coated sistine chapel-worthy art of what it feels like to be failed by an enmeshed, emotionally incestuous parent who purports to care but also can’t stop fucking it up 🥲
there is also madeleine’s turning which… louis’ turning is in a church on an altar, right? it is louis’ birth & marriage & consummation & death all at once. ESPECIALLY when you think of how present blood is in the its traditional imagery in pregnancy (blood feeds the foetus), birthing (messy), consummation of the marriage bed (bleeding as a mark of virginity), death (bleeding out). if we apply the same reading of turning as birth-death-marriage-sexual consummation to claudia’s turning, the incest implications are hand in hand with the csa implications. lestat makes a point of explicitly seeking louis’ consent for his turning, but neither of them seek claudia’s consent & she is explicitly not capable of giving consent even if she was conscious bc she is a child. when it comes to madeleine’s making i think it’s all these things — madeleine’s death, her birth, a ménage à trois with siblings (madeleine herself becoming claudia’s sisterdaughter thru claudia’s participation), ménage à trois with parent and child (thru which madeleine again becomes child, becoming louis’ daughter). on top of that, i think louis thinks of this as his duty, ie he’s giving claudia away at her wedding to madeleine. i know i’ve said elsewhere that louis draining daniel in sf ‘73 is the equivalent participation in daniel’s turning as he played in claudia’s (positioning Daniel as the Claudia of Louis and Armand’s relationship). claudia helping drain madeleine is like she’s taking on louis’ role in claudia’s creation, and louis is stepping in to lestat’s role (also Claudia is asking Louis to make Madeleine, as Louis was asking Lestat to make Claudia etc).
initially, i was going to write an essay about Marius & Armand and sexual transgression in Ovid’s Metamorphoses for @divorceblogger but that’s too much to fit into one coherent thought rn so i wrote this instead. the last thing i will say is that i watched Mona Lisa by Neil Jordan last week and it fundamentally rewired my brain. obsessed with it, obsessed with every dyad and triad and every shifting triptych, perfect film, nobody commits to the trinity like irish catholics commit to the trinity, real triptych-heads understand 😔 godspeed & stay weird abt it
