Romance and revulsion : consensual sibling incest in contemporary historicised fiction

Archer, Bethan and Ferreday, Debra and Pearce, Lynne (2025) Romance and revulsion : consensual sibling incest in contemporary historicised fiction. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This thesis establishes a critical account of consensual, sibling incest within contemporary culture with a specific focus on historical fictions. Adopting a cultural studies framework, I take an interdisciplinary approach in exploring how sibling incest is not a subject of illicit fascination for the perverse, but a pervasive, discursive phenomenon. Adhering to the argument that historical fiction speaks to the present, I argue the flexibility of the incestuous in the past does more than produce it as a space of brutality to contrast with the civility of the ‘non-incestuous’ modern day. Combining close reading with a feminist theoretical framework, I ask: how does the modern reframing of this historicised trope reflect contemporary uncertainties surrounding normative sexualities and familial relationships? Adapting Claude Levi-Strauss’ (1969) contributions to Alliance Theory and Gayle Rubin’s (1995) understanding of this organisation of kinship as fundamental to the creation of sex-gender systems, I examine how fictional, consensual incest can be re-theorised as offering feminist, critical readings of patriarchy. While adhering to a feminist view that incest is produced by patriarchy, I question whether these fictional relationships reproduce it, and instead read them as a point of disruption. Believing our contemporary fascination with consensual sibling incest extends beyond a titillating interest in the taboo or unequivocal abuse, this thesis argues that incestuous narratives offer a space for appraising the power dynamics present in heterosexual love, romance, consent, marriage, reproduction, and intimacy. The thesis uses a case study approach to reassert the importance of close reading. Offering an alternative to the sociological readings often adopted when considering literary/cultural, incest texts, I examine the work being done by the text itself. The first case study analyses The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) to consider the potential of reasserting a historical figure as incestuous and exploring incest as a flexible site of attraction and control. The second case study examines Lucrezia Borgia in The Borgias (2011-2014), producing Lucrezia as a ‘sticky’ incestuous figure, analysing the appeal of the incestuous figure, and the space to consider her as ‘more than’ incestuous. The third case study reconsiders understandings of genre by arguing for the memoir as a form of historical fiction and the portrayal of incest in a space of nostalgia by examining Call the Midwife (2012-). I position the text as a reconfiguration of the traditional anthropological entwining of class, institutional interference/support, and incest. The final case study, Game of Thrones (2011-2019) examines the cultural preoccupation with incestuous couplings as monstrous and resulting in ‘monstrous’ children. Reframing the idea of monstrosity, I move away from the incestuously produced grotesque monster to consider monsters as socially, not genetically, produced.