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

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sought to divorce Katherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow, after twenty years of
marriage in order to marry Anne Boleyn—another incestuous relationship, as he had
previously had a sexual relationship with her sister.
Further complicating the plot is the bargain struck between Manfred and
Frederick, Isabella’s father; they agree to exchange daughters for the purpose of
marriage, though this too is thwarted by Isabella’s resistance to both of her fathers.
Isabella’s only remaining choice is to flee to the sanctuary of a convent, choosing a
completely asexual existence rather than an incestuous, and certainly distasteful,
relationship. This moment of Manfred’s rejection of Hippolita is accompanied by his
rejection of his daughter, too, which completes the decimation of his family. Manfred
must have the power to exchange his women for, as described by Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick, “the use of women as exchangeable, perhaps symbolic, property” (26) is a
bulwark of patriarchy. 2 The failure of Manfred to maintain control of his women is due
to his wrong, incestuous desires, and leads to the dismantling of his power.
While Gothic novel and drama share many of the same conventions and the
same thematic concerns, the drama “arises to resolve different problems than the Gothic
novel, for it takes place in a different institutional context—that of the theater—and its
rather rapid rise and fall occur within a specific historical period defined by particular
ideological pressures” (Cox 7-8)—pressure which traditional dramatic forms could no
longer effectively translate. 3
Recognized as the first Gothic novelist, Walpole is also the
2 Sedgwick follows Claude Levi-Strauss’s theory of society-building: "The total relationship of exchange
which constitutes marriage is not established between a man and a woman, where each owes and receives.”
3 Cox also feels that the design of the physical theater, the building itself, had changed in ways that were
slightly less suitable for traditional dramatic forms such as tragedy and comedy (8).