For the majority of my blog posts so far, I have just essentially been discussing the various pieces that we've read in this class, but for this post, I definitely wanted to bring out some outside readings that I've done and relate them back to the class. The issue of incest was brought about when we read Hamlet, but by today's standards, a widow marrying her husband's brother would not exactly qualify as incest, since there really is no blood relation. It may be a little weird, but in my opinion, it is completely acceptable.
I do feel like the issue of incest is one of the most common taboos across the board. It is dismissed in pretty much every culture and never exactly addressed by the media either. Honestly, the only other book I've read that had to with incest was the 1979 cult classic Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, and I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to discuss that work, seeing as it deals with incest which was also discussed in Hamlet, and that I also have been revisiting the work for the past couple weeks, seeing as it was just remade into a made-for-TV movie. If people have never heard of this story, it is essentially about a widowed mother named Corinne who had married her half-brother, who locks in her four children up into an attic with the intent of killing them off in order to gain her wealthy father's inheritance. The grandfather, who is a religious zealot, believes that since the four children were products of incest, that they need to be eliminated, he seems them as an abomination. In addition to this, the two eldest children, Cathy and Chris, begin a sexual relationship while being locked away for the three years in which Corinne slowly poisons the four children by feeding them doughnuts that are lightly laced with arsenic, unbeknownst to the children (the children think they are simply being locked away until the grandfather himself dies). It really is one of my favorite books ever, VC Andrews in my opinion is essentially the theoretical lovechild of Jane Austen and Edgar Allen Poe.
My mother, who read the book herself, was shocked to learn that I read it as well. She didn't necessarily approve. I was only in junior high when I read it for the first time, and she felt I wasn't mature enough to be reading about things like incest.
So the two stories in which I've encountered incest both share a common theme: that is an abomination worthy of death. But why is this? Why is this such a taboo? I took an Anthropology class in the spring term of my freshman year and we talked extensively about the issue. One of the most common issues why incest is such a taboo is because of the biological deficiencies of future children, but we learned that such defects do not even start to relatively show up until after generations and generations and generations of incestuous offspring. One explanation that was simply a theory is that we're genetically wired at birth to not be attracted to members of our own family. And one of the most reasonable explanations is that in ancient civilizations, children were encouraged to marry outside their family to extend the family, and therefore forge a bond that could open up trade possibilities and well as sharing wealth.
After reading all the reasons why the incest taboo has become such a cultural norm everywhere, it does seem like they were foolish reasons. Back when the world was dependent on religion, they thought that just because the Bible felt that children who were the products of incest would be biologically deficient, having devils hooves, etc. that it would actually happen, and in terms of the marrying outside your family thing, the decision to make incest so forbidden was simply to drive the increase of a family's wealth, almost entirely commercial. But even with all those explanations, incest still just seems so weird to me, and that's just because we learn from an early age that it just does not happen at all in normal life, it is an accepted fact that no one even needs to question.
I guess where your opinions lie on the matter is what you think qualifies as incest? I do think there's some sort of law that forbids you from marrying anyone who is your 2nd cousin or closer, but 3rd cousins and so on is fair game. But like I said before in a previous blog post, I have a huge family that is incredibly close, and I know people like my 3rd and 4th cousins and even though it would be "culturally and legally" acceptable for me to marry them, there's still part of me that is just seriously repulsed by that idea. And then there's the "6 degrees of separation" theory, if you go back far enough, you can probably find out that you're related to just about anybody in the world. Does that not qualify as incest as well? FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most beloved President and First Lady ever, were third/fourth cousins (can't really remember to be honest).
I.... honestly did not realize how long this blog ended up being, I didn't mean to ramble. But the too long, didn't read version: The issue of incest is obviously completely taboo to everyone everywhere, to the point where it is virtually discussed nowhere, and when it is, those guilty of it has to be punished by death.
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