SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
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134<br />
God bless me; and pass’d on. I urged him farther:<br />
Good master, cried he, go not to the castle;<br />
<strong>The</strong>re sorrow ever dwells, and moping misery. (I. 1. 1-21)<br />
<strong>The</strong> castle is a place of silence and emptiness, resembling a graveyard. Not only does the<br />
churl wear an aspect of horror, but it has been worn to “habitude.” <strong>The</strong> despair in<br />
Narbonne is longstanding. Though suitably grand, the castle is nonetheless a home, a<br />
supposed haven from the threats of the outside world. In Narbonne and in Otranto,<br />
though, the home is paradoxically a place of danger. Instead of a male authority figure<br />
menacing a vulnerable woman, in <strong>The</strong> Mysterious Mother the mother, supposed source of<br />
protection for her children, presents a danger to her son and thus to future generations,<br />
and to society as a whole. This is a clear example of contemporaneous anxieties over the<br />
perception attack on the family. Women in power destroy not only social institutions<br />
such as patriarchy and monarchy, they destroy the family itself and by implication the<br />
entire social fabric.<br />
<strong>The</strong> comparison of castle to the Countess’ psychological state may be expanded to<br />
analogize the castle to the female body, as it did in <strong>The</strong> Castle of Otranto. Heiland’s<br />
description of the interior of the castle, noted earlier, relates that it is “womb-like . . .<br />
meant for breeding” (73). But in Castle Narbonne the Countess’s maternal function, and<br />
the safety of the home, are perverted. Because of the incest and her resulting guilt, the<br />
Countess fails in her role in many different ways. She is unavailable to Edmund as a<br />
mother and he is banished from home. She did not protect the “body” of the castle—nor<br />
her own body—from defilement, allowing not only unauthorized but also incestuous<br />
sexual activity to bring both to ruin. This home is unable to contain dangerous female