The Westermarck trap: a possible factor in the creation of Frankenstein

by J.S. Price, D.M., M.R.C.P., M.R.C.Psych.

Senior Lecturer

Department of Psychological Medicine

University of Tasmania (from 1.2.1995)

Summary

When children affected by the "Westermarck effect" are expected to marry each other, like those in Taiwan described by Wolf and Huang (1980), we may speak of the "Westermarck trap". Students of the Westermark effect may be interested to know that this trap is depicted in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, in which Victor Frankenstein is expected to marry a cousin reared with him. Instead, he creates a monster which persecutes him and murders his prospective bride before the marriage can be consummated. It is suggested that the plot owes something to Mary Shelley's own experience of the Westermarck effect, following a childhood in which she was reared with a step-brother. Her own personal solution was not to create a monster but to elope with a married man (Percy Bysshe Shelley) at the age of 16.

Key words: incest taboo, Westermarck effect, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, familial bonding

Introduction

Over a century ago, Edward Westermarck (1891) gathered evidence concerning the mutual sexual indifference of people brought up as "housemates". He wrote:

"Generally speaking, there is a remarkable absence of

erotic feelings between persons living very closely

together from childhood. Nay more, in this, as in many

other cases, sexual indifference is combined with the

positive feeling of aversion when the act is thought of.

This I take to be the fundamental cause of the exogamous

prohibitions. Persons who have been living closely

together from childhood are as a rule near relatives.

Hence their aversion to sexual relations with one another

displays itself in custom and law as a prohibition of

intercourse between near kin."

He pointed out that in cultures in which married sons live with

their parents it is usual for marriage to be prohibited between

cousins whose fathers are brothers, whereas cousins related

1through the female line (who are brought up in separate

households) are permitted to marry. This instinctive aversion

to sexual feelings between those brought up together has become

known as the "Westermarck effect".

Wolf and Huang (1980) described the "minor marriages" in Taiwan, in which children are affianced in infancy, and the prospective bride is brought to live in the boy's household at a very early age, so that the prospective marriage partners are virtually brought up as brother and sister; in adult life the couples suffer from broken marriages and reduced fertility. In such cases, the Westermarck effect could be called the Westermarck trap, because through one channel of influence the parents insist that their child mate with a certain person, but through another channel of influence (bringing the girl to live in their home as a baby) they make it impossible (or at least difficult) for their child to mate with that person.

I should like to describe an example of this phenomenon which is depicted in the novel Frankenstein, or the New Prometheus by Mary Shelley (first published 1818; revised edition 1831; quotations taken from edition by M.K. Joseph, Oxford University Press, 1969).

The plot of Frankenstein

The novel has a Chinese box or Russian doll design. In the outer

layer, a traveller Robert Walton, who is searching for a passage

to the supposed warm sea at the North Pole, describes his

adventures in a series of letters to his sister back in England.

Walton rescues Victor Frankenstein who is then chasing the

monster across the ice. Frankenstein describes to Walton the

creation of the monster and his subsequent dealings with it,

including a long passage in which the monster describes to

Frankenstein the events which followed its creation.

Victor Frankenstein (he relates to Robert Walton) was the son

of a nobleman of Geneva. He was only "about five" when his

father brought into the home a girl of the same age called

Elizabeth. It was the "dearest wish" of his parents that Victor

should marry Elizabeth, but although the two young people showed

every evidence of familial bonding (Erickson, 1993) there was no spark of romance or sexual attraction between them. Nevertheless, they were engaged to be married by the time of his mother's death, when she "commends the girl to take her place."

At university Victor studies natural science, and becomes

interested in the creation of life. "He fashions a gigantic man

out of dead tissues and animates the creature with an electrical

spark, but is instantly revolted by the grotesque being he has

created and wishes it were dead" (Myers, 1982). He abandons the creature and has a nervous breakdown, and then returns home when he hears that his younger brother William has been murdered. He discovers that his creature has committed the murder, and implicated an innocent girl, who is executed.

When Victor shows evidence of depression, his father suspects

that he might be having a problem with the prospect of marriage

to his foster sister, and addresses his son as follows (p 150):

"I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to

your marriage with our dear Elizabeth, as the tie of our

domestic comfort, and the stay of my declining years. You

were attached to each other from the earliest infancy: you

studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes,

entirely suited to one another. But so blind is the

experience of man, that what I conceived to be the best

assistants to my plan, may have entirely destroyed it. You

perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any wish that

she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with

another whom you may love, and, considering yourself bound

in honour to Elizabeth, this struggle may occasion the

poignant misery which you appear to feel."

Victor, perhaps not the most insightful of fictional characters,

denies any impediment to his forthcoming marriage:

"My dear father, re-assure yourself. I love my cousin

tenderly and sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited,

as Elizabeth does, my warmest admiration and affection. My

future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the

expectation of our union."

Then, at the top of an Alpine glacier, he meets the monster who

gives him a detailed account of his life, and how he managed to

educate himself in spite of a total absence of care from his

creator. He tells Victor how everyone recoils from his ugliness,

and makes Victor pity him to such an extent that Victor agrees

to his request to create a female monster to provide a mate for

him. However, having almost completed the female creature,

Victor changes his mind and destroys her. The monster promises

to be with Victor and his bride on their wedding night.

As the wedding approaches, Victor's confidence in the match

lessens: (p 191):

As the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether

from cowardice or a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink

within me. But I concealed my feelings by an appearance of

hilarity....".

Four pages later Victor marries Elizabeth, but the marriage is

not consummated. On their wedding night he sends her up to bed

but does not join her. Instead he paces up and down searching

for the monster, when he hears a shriek, and finds his bride

lying murdered on her bed.

He then chases the monster across Europe, finally following

him onto the polar ice-cap where he meets Robert Walton to whom

he relates his life story and then dies. The monster then

expresses guilt to Walton about his creator's death, and promises

to immolate himself in atonement.

The sibling incest theme

In the novel, Elizabeth and Victor were brought up together in

the same household from the age of four onwards. In the first (1818) edition of the novel Elizabeth was an orphaned cousin, but in the revised edition of 1831, the author converted her into an unrelated person.

An exchange of letters between brother and sister is the outer

shell of the novel. It may be significant that Mary Shelley

depicts a brother setting off far into the polar wastes in search

of a sea route to the North Pole, leaving his sister back home,

thus eliminating any possibility of sexual bonding between them;

and at the same time he writes to the sister detailed letters

about his travels, demonstrating the strength of familial bonding

between them. This safe sibling relationship in the shell of the

novel contrasts with the predicament of Victor and his foster

sister, who are expected to achieve sexual consummation but fail

to do so.

How could this sophisticated portrayal be accomplished by Mary

Shelley at the age of 18? Here we should look at the childhood

of Mary Shelley, well documented in the letters and journals of

her family.

The childhood of Mary Shelley

Mary was born in August, 1797. Her mother, Mary

Wollstonecraft, died of sepsis some ten days after young Mary's

birth. Then, when she was three and a half, Mary's father married a widow, Mary Jane Clairmont, who had two children, Charles, aged five, and Claire who was the same age as Mary. Although there is no evidence that any parental pressure was put

on Mary and Charles to marry, it may have been her own wonder at

her lack of sexual attraction to Charles that gave her an

intuitive understanding of the Westermarck effect, and her

fantasies of what might happen if she were required to marry

Charles that gave her an insight into the dangers of the

Westermarck trap; and possibly that led her to escape from the

trap herself by flouting all convention and eloping with Percy

Bysshe Shelley (then a married man) at the age of 16.

Conclusion

The novel Frankenstein has been the subject of much comment in the psychiatric literature, and suggestions of mother/child and father/child incest have been noted (Baudry, 1982/3; Myers, 1982/3). It may be of interest that Mary Shelley's second novel Mathilda (edited by Elizabeth Nitchie, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969) is based on father/daughter incest and at the same time her husband was dealing with the same theme in The Cenci.

The Westermarck effect is a subject of increasing scientific interest (Shepher, 1983; McCabe, 1983; Erickson, 1993, 1994; Bevc and Silverman, 1993; Wolf, 1993; Wolf, in press). The present note draws attention to the possibility of psychopathological development when the sexual instinct is caught, between the Westermarck effect and parental injunctions to marry, in what might be called the Westermarck trap.

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