SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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Theodore is killed a group of knights led by Isabella’s father, Frederic, arrives. In the
fighting Theodore wounds Frederic. The group moves to the castle to discuss their
differences and Frederic falls in love with Matilda. Frederic and Manfred begin to work
out a deal in which they will marry each other’s daughters. Later, still in the grips of
madness, Manfred hears a noise and assumes it is Isabella and Theodore. He bursts in on
them and in a jealous rage fatally stabs the girl, not realizing that it was in fact his own
daughter. In the end it is revealed that Theodore is the true heir of Otranto, and he
marries Isabella. Manfred and his wife take religious vows and spend the rest of their
lives in seclusion.
Manfred is the embodiment of medieval tyranny. His rule began ignobly, with
his usurpation of the throne from its rightful owner, and his growing obsession with
producing an heir to keep it motivates his actions. His reason is undermined by his
uncontrolled will to maintain control. But The Mysterious Mother takes the notion of
tyranny one step further, fusing it to the problem of uncontrolled female agency. The
play begins on the night of her husband’s death, when the Countess of Narbonne goes
into her son Edmund’s room to chastise him for flirting with the maids at such a time. He
is, in fact, expecting one of those young ladies to slip into his room and in the darkness
doesn’t realize it is his mother. She, however, is so grief-stricken and sees such a
resemblance to her husband in her son, that she seduces him. He still believes it is the
maid and has no idea his lover was his mother. The next day she sends him out of the
castle as punishment for not having properly mourned his father. The Countess finds
herself pregnant and passes off the child, a girl named Adeliza, as an orphan that she has