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Book review
Sibling Love & Incest in Jane Austen’s Fiction

by Glenda A Hudson

Macmillan Press Ltd London, 1992

An eye catching title – salacious even, if not quite up there with newspaper headlines several years ago declaring an astonishing discovery that Jane Austen was a lesbian.

In the same way that people rushed to attribute a lesbian relationship between Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra, based on ignorance of the fact that sisters sharing a bedroom, and even being devoted best friends, was commonplace at the time, so we must not rush into deploring the suggestion of incest in Austen’s fiction, based on our ignorance of the way scholars writing from a university can fashion meaning from a word beyond its face value as understood by the rest of us.

Before going on to a consideration of the book, let me clarify my understanding of what Glenda Hudson means when she uses the word ‘incest’.

For Hudson, three of Austen’s novels end with marriages that have incestuous overtones. Mansfield Park (Fanny and Edmund are first cousins who have been brought up as brother and sister in the same household), Emma (the heroine marries her brother-in-law, Mr Knightley, who throughout much of the novel shares a fraternal relationship with her) and Sense and Sensibility (Elinor, like Emma, marries her brother-in-law, Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon tells of his desire to marry Eliza Williams, a sister-in-law brought up as his sister p 9). Of Mr Knightley and Emma she writes ‘their later love relationship may be seen as incestuous in that it grew out of a fraternal bond…their relationship begins as a domestic attachment.’ (p 33)

So it is not incest as perhaps we would automatically assume the word to mean that Glenda A Hudson refers. Indeed, she goes on to say that

the literary legacy passed down to Austen was laden with undercurrents and instances of brother/sister incest – incest evaded, suggested or committed….the incest motif crops up in so much of the literature of Austen’s period that it become almost a formula, even a code… Austen...exploited the fashionable topic of incest…and challenged, metamorphosed, and transcended the subject…Austen’s incestuous unions are, for the most part, positive and therapeutic. (9)

Hudson refers to Lesley Castle’s article (‘Sister-Sister,’ London Review of Books 17 (3 August 1995) which resulted in the Is Jane Austen Gay? controversy. Castle comments

…it is a curious yet arresting phenomenon in the novels that so many of the final happy marriages seem designed not so much to bring about a union between a hero and heroine as between the heroine and the heroine’s sister.

Moreover she notes that Austen’s letters reveal

…the passionate nature of the sibling bond. These are exactly the focal points in this book, although I focus on brother-sister relations as much as sororal relations…The type of incest I refer to is different from the kind that intrigues Castle; the incestuous unions I analyze are not sensational unions but a series of reactions to popular works of the time….I demonstrate the ways in which Austen’s sibling-like unions promote the concept of a relatively coequal and gender-free community, in which the sterling attributes of both men and women predominate, and women are valued as much as men. (preface p xiii).

So, Hudson writes,

the type of incest introduced by Austen did not involve blood siblings, but rather foster-siblings, first cousins and in-laws, individuals bound by strong familial obligations, whose affections have been formed within the domestic circle, and whose relationships are viewed by other members of society as fraternal….unlike other literary works of the time, where incest increased horror or creates moral chaos and violence, Austen’s novels present incestuous alliances that preserve order and re-establish domestic harmony….she seems to be concerned with desensationalising the fixation with incest. (p 24)

However, as a reader, my individual response to the text is that the word ‘incest’ still carries a sense of taboo and I continued to enclose it in mental inverted commas each time I read it. Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility and Emma share a chapter titled ‘Incestuous Sibling Relationships’ and Hudson writes the novels ‘conclude optimistically with the expulsion or removal of menacing intruders and with the preservation and revivification of the home and family. Incest in Austen’s novels creates a loving and enclosed family circle.’ (p 35). If a word other than incest were used here, I would be sitting down nodding my head in agreement. Similarly, when she writes that

The joint experiences of shared childhood and mutual associations Austen shows, creates a potent and sympathetic love, a co-mingling of fraternal and erotic feelings, which, although the emphasis is very much on the former, we must recognise as a kind of incestuous love (p 12)

I can agree with the first part, without admitting her conclusion. But that romance and domesticity can co-exist, or spring one from the other, does not mean that ‘incest’ is involved. Glenda A Hudson herself indicates this when she says of Mr Knightley

there seems to be no initial boundary or lingering taboo imposed between sibling love and the love that leads to marriage. In fact, Mr Knightley appears to understand more immediately that these two types of love closely resemble each other in that they are relationships forged through trust, deep affection, and the common beliefs of members of the same family. (p 51).

This appears to be a rational explanation with which I can agree, rather than perhaps the more Freudian interpretation which underpins some of her arguments.

To sum up chapter three, Austen will not allow her heroines to marry on the grounds of sexual magnetism (well, looking at Knightley, Edmund and Edward: you’d have to agree!) or romantic love. She

constructs marriages on the foundation of sibling ties….at the end of the novels, there is finally the promise of the untainted family circle….the marriages of Elinor and Edward, Emma and Mr Knightley and Fanny and Edmund, far from seeming illicit or immoral unions, become more nearly moral imperatives. (p 60)

Hudson moves on to slightly less confronting territory and considers the crucial role that sisters play in the development of their siblings (for example, Elizabeth – Jane, Eleanor – Catherine, Fanny – Susan). She shows how sisters both educate and function as models for each other, becoming parents in place of negligent or missing ones. The ideal sister, like the ideal husband, is a caretaker and a teacher figure. (p 73). ‘The complimentarity and intellectual equality, devotion and esteem, admiration and fidelity of Jane and Cassandra matches that of the perfect marriages in Austen’s novels’ (p 64) where there are ‘two major plots operating in tandem – the plot to win the husband and the plot to win the sister.’ (p 63)

There is always a new way to consider what is familiar and taken for granted, and for me in Hudson’s book it was the subject of sibling rivalry. I am not sufficiently acquainted with biographical details of Jane Austen’s life and family to know how much weight to give to the assertion that

surely Austen suffered from some jealousy over the dominant position accorded her elder sister. The family’s favouritism, and the author’s subsequent feelings of ambivalence towards her sister on occasions, may account for the theme of sibling rivalry which recurs throughout Austen’s fiction (p 67).

But she uses it as a springboard for consideration of relationships between the sisters in Sense and Sensibility, where sexual rivalry is more apparent that in Pride and Prejudice (between Jane and Elizabeth).

Austen’s own relationship with her sister Cassandra may help to account for the presentation of the major sororal relationships in the two works….Sense and Sensibility was completely rewritten between 1797 and 1798, after the novelist’s unsuccessful romance with Tom Lefroy. Thomas Fowle had proposed to Cassandra and been accepted, but Tom Lefroy was not seriously in love with Jane and did not propose to her, apparently much to her chagrin. The novelist’s feelings of disappointment and envy may well be reflected in Sense and Sensibility in the sibling rivalry between Elinor and Marianne. The jealousy and antagonism between the principal sisters are more noticeable than in Pride and Prejudice, and Lucy and Nancy Steele, another pair of competing sisters, also accentuate the theme of sibling rivalry in the novel. (p 80).

I would like to think that Jane Austen was above such emotions as envy of a sister’s happiness, but without the deep understanding of human nature displayed in her work, much of which must have come from experience, her novels would not now be of such great significance to her readers.

In the concluding chapters of the book, Hudson uses the Cinderella motif to assess Austen’s women and the parable of the prodigal son to assess relationships between some of her men. She writes that

although (Austen) frequently twists and disfigures components of the Cinderella dream in order to highlight the misconceptions and false expectations to which they give rise, Austen ultimately exploits the crucial elements of fantasy. All her novels, for instance, offer examples of wish fulfillment: they have happy endings and the heroines attain or even surpass their dreams of love….Her revamped versions of the Cinderella story justify the inclusion of a new kind of relationship with a hero or a more democratic marriage grounded in fraternal ties (p 97). And for the men, heroes must fit the bill not only of the loving prince but also of a husband and relative who will serve to forward the welfare of the family group(p 102).

She offers a comparison with other writers familiar to Jane Austen such as Richardson, Burney and Fielding, to show how much Austen used the familiar to further her goal of portraying more equal relationships between her men and women.

Elsewhere¹ Hudson contends

the in-family marriages of Fanny and Edmund, Emma and Mr Knightley and Elinor and Edward are rooted in a profound and abiding domestic love, which merges spiritual, intellectual and physical affinities. These qualities have been largely overlooked by feminist critics, who tend to focus their attention on political and economic realities (106). … I wish to demonstrate the ways in which Austen’s sibling-like unions promote a new concept of a relatively coequal and gender-free community in which the sterling attributes of both men and women predominate, and where women are valued as much as men (p 101)

I found this book difficult to read, and consequently, difficult to review, but this is not so much due to the subject matter as to the manner of its presentation. Such wordings as ‘the collective power of the sororal pairs escalates with the annexation of other enlisted siblings’ (p 71) or ‘the mythic pattern of her novels remains firmly anchored in the paradisiacal world of the galvanized family clique’ (p 98) or ‘the marriages of consanguineal relatives such as cousins and of close affines are’ (p 9) left me struggling.

At times I found reading this book a bit like reading a book in a foreign language – by the time one untangles the meaning of the individual words, the meaning of the sentence or paragraph as a whole is lost. The provision of a glossary by a thoughtful editor would have been a useful addition to the text.

Other readers may seize on this text with joy, perhaps feeling that current approaches to literature have resulted in a dumbing down of our culture. But somewhere in between according Clueless equal status with Emma in the HSC, and Sibling Love & Incest in Jane Austen’s Fiction would, for me, have proved more stimulating, for there is no doubt that the book offers yet another way of reading Austen’s novels.

I would suggest that those interested in Hudson’s topic perhaps tackle the essay referred to above initially, and then, if the appetite is whetted, move on to the more fully developed presentation in the book under review.

1 ‘Consolidated Communities: Masculine and Feminine Values in Jane Austen’s Fiction’ In: Devoney Looser (Ed) Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism St Martin’s Press New York 1995

Amanda Jones

14 February 2004

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