"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.
