Challenging the Victorian Nuclear Family Myth: The Incest Trope in Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak

Abstract

espanolLa literatura (neo)victoriana ofrece conceptualizaciones contradictorias de la familia nuclear, ya que generalmente gira en torno a hogares tradicionales heteroparentales pero los presenta como fragmentados y profundamente disfuncionales. La pelicula Crimson Peak (2015) del director Guillermo del Toro se basa en tres motivos recurrentes en la ficcion gotica (neo) victoriana, los traumas domesticos, la familia disfuncional y lo sobrenatural. Mi objetivo principal es explorar como Del Toro utiliza la trama del incesto para subvertir las visiones preconcebidas e idealizadas sobre la familia victoriana. En primer lugar, analizo la casa ancestral y la figura materna como origen de los traumas familiares, para a continuacion examinar la relacion incestuosa entre los hermanos Sharpe desde un enfoque triple: etico, estetico y psicoanalitico. Sobre esta base, argumento que Del Toro representa traumas familiares del siglo XIX que continuan siendo relevantes en la sociedad actual, con el objetivo de que los espectadores puedan tomar conciencia de estos problemas sociales e incluso adoptar una postura activa contra los mismos. English(Neo-)Victorian literature offers contradictory conceptualisations of the nuclear family. While it usually revolves around traditional heteroparental households, at the same time it portrays them as fragmented and deeply flawed. Guillermo del Toro’s film Crimson Peak (2015) builds on domestic traumas, the dysfunctional family and the supernatural, three recurrent tropes in (neo-)Victorian Gothic fiction. My main aim is to explore how Del Toro exploits the incest plotline in order to subvert preconceived views on the idealised Victorian family. I first analyse the ancestral family house and the mother figure as the loci of family traumas. I then move on to examine the Sharpe siblings’ incestuous relationship from a threefold perspective involving ethics, aesthetics and psychoanalysis, thereby showing that Del Toro exposes nineteenth-century family traumas that are still present in contemporary societies, so that audiences may become aware of these social issues and even take an active stance against them.