Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | Incest in Victorian Literature - Audra Dibert Himes (essay date 1997)

Audra Dibert Himes (essay date 1997)

SOURCE: “‘Knew shame, and knew desire’: Ambivalence as Structure in Mary Shelley's Mathilda,” in Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after Frankenstein, edited by Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, Associated University Presses, 1997, pp. 115-29.

[In the following essay, Himes explains that while incest was a conventional theme of nineteeth-century literature, Mary Shelley treats this theme very differently in Mathilda by presenting Mathilda's desire as especially transgressive.]

“Such is my name, and such my tale,
                    Confessor—to thy secret ear,
          I breathe the sorrows I bewail,
And thank thee for the generous tear
This glazing eye could never shed.”

—Lord Byron, “The Giaour” (1813)

Mathilda is an arresting, riveting work, strange in its representation of incestuous...

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