Daddy’s Girl: Incest in Life and Literature

Abstract:Eric Gill wallowed in his depravity and didn’t care about the terrible effects on the young girls in his family. Djuna Barnes was permanently wounded by her double trauma. Diana Arbus supposedly felt no guilt, but killed herself. Sappho Durrell, psychologically damaged, also committed suicide. In the literary works, the brother-sister incest ranges from doubly tragic in John Ford to mythically and musically elevated in Thomas Mann. It is idealized, even glorified, despite the tragic consequences, in Jean Cocteau and his follower Lawrence Durrell. Incest is elusive and merely hinted at in Barnes, disastrous and tragic in Scott Fitzgerald. All these works contrast the evil curse of incest with its perverse delights, and never resolve the eternal conflict between passionate nature and repressive morality.