Father-Daughter Incest in Classic Literature

While Nabakov's Lolita offers the most obvious and well-known case of a father figure's (Humbert Humbert) lust for his wife's young daughter, that theme can be found in various other novels of classic literature.

Sinclair Lewis, the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, describes in his novel Cass Timberlane a conservative middle-class lawyer who lusts after his own fifteen year old daughter. Of his five unwanted children, "there was also their fifteen year old daughter, Betty, whom he loved." His wife frequently criticizes him for his lustful ideas regarding their daughter, saying "George! I will not have you looking at Betty that way!" Nevertheless her husband continues to lust after his daughter, rationalizing that "She looked much older than fifteen, didn't she?" He is jealous of each of the neighborhood boys whom she dates, and he even goes so far as to hope that "Someday, he and Betty would run off together to France."

Several Thomas Hardy novels have incestuous undertones. In A Pair of Blue Eyes the young Elfride is pursued by two young men, only to marry the widower next door who had been her father's best friend. The title female in The Hand of Ethelberta is pursued by the elderly Lord Mountclere who, according to her sister, "is old enough to be my grandfather, and yours, too, sixty-five at least." The twenty-two year old Ethelberta marries Montclere, whose wife had helped raise Ethelberta's mother over forty years ago.

Hardy's most disturbing venture into the theme of incest appears in one of his last novels, The Well-Beloved. The novel's main character Jocelyn Pierston falls in love with the seventeen year old daughter of a former girlfriend. The fortysomething architect becomes engaged to the girl, only to be separated by a tragic event. Twenty years later Pierston encounters his former fiancé, who is now forty and has a sixteen year old daughter of her own. Pierston at once lusts for the girl, and her mom actually encourages the girl to take an interest in him. The elderly Pierston begins to romance the girl, and she seems receptive at first, perhaps merely to please her mother.

French novelist Guy DeMaupassant also hints at similar incest in his novel Bel-Ami. The title character beds quite a few women, but he becomes immediately attracted to the eleven year old daughter of his mistress. The mother encouraged the girl to sit in Bel-Ami's lap and to kiss his cheek during his daily visits to the home. Bel-Ami ends up marrying the girl a few years later.

Incestuous undertones are nearly as obvious in Jane Austen's classic Emma. The title character herself seems unnaturally fond of her father. Emma says emphatically throughout the novel that she has "very little intention of marrying at all," and much of the reason lies in her relationship with her father. In the introduction in the Signet Classic edition, Margaret Drabble points out that Emma "comes first with her father and is mistress of her own house." How much of Mr. Woodhouse's ill health is feigned, and how much of it is an attempt to remain dependant on his older daughter?

When Emma finally does marry at the end, she chooses a much older man. Mr. Knightley is her father's closest friend and a neighbor who has known Emma since she was born. Knightley is nearing forty at the time of the marriage, while Emma is barely old enough to buy alcohol. The age difference seems even greater when Knightley confesses to Emma, "I have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least."

A famous novel by Charles Dickens contains a marriage between a girl and her father figure. At the end of Bleak House Esther marries her guardian, Mr. Jarndyce. In chapter 63, the fifty year old Jarndyce confesses to nineteen year old Esther, "I sometimes dreamed when you were very, very young of making you my wife one day."

It is difficult in today's society to imagine an elderly neighbor man or a father figure marrying a girl in her teens and have it celebrated the way such ceremonies are described in some works of classic literature. Modern travel has made meeting new people more frequent, unlike the stationary, small-town lives during the time of Dickens, Austen, and Hardy.