when internet people are like “i love gothic literature but i hate anything that discusses incest, sexual violence, oppression, misogyny, abuse, torture, gore, murder, or death”
no actually me and everyone else who’s ever watched crimson peak were brainwashed by guillermo del toro into believing that incest and violence are cool and awesome. sorry
a lot of victorians thought first-cousin marriage– arranged by their parents–was good, actually, because the boy and girl already knew how to get along, neither party had to move too far away from their existing family, or move at all, and all the resources to inherit a business and set up a household were just, right there, in place. and the grandmother or -father of the family would definitely have good reason to approve of their grandkids staying put rather than marrying out or bringing anyone else in.
so, like, yeah, victorian literature and gothic literature has a lot to do with the ways the family unit can be imperiled, whether by rot from within or infection from without, and at the time that family unit probably had a significant amount of what we would now term incest. so like, ‘people can agree that’– no. people are always going to disagree. sometimes because they lived a hundred and fifty years ago. sometimes because they live now and understand that cultures change over time and that nothing is ever simple and easy and universal and eternal. and sometimes because BAD THINGS CAN AND SHOULD BE DEPICTED IN FICTION BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT MAKES A STORY INTERESTING, BECKY.
