The Beast in the Closet: Interrogating the Trauma of Sibling Incest in Emma Donoghue's Neo-Victorian Novel The Wonder

Abstract

Emma Donoghue's neo-Victorian novel The Wonder (2016) is a remarkable exploration of the Victorian era's indifference towards the issues of woman and child safety against the heinous crimes of sexual abuse. The horror of sibling incest, which eventually develops the sense of guilt within the protagonist and gradually isolates her from the entire extrinsic world, has been taken into consideration for the analysis of the unusual narratives of tremendous shock and trauma that the novel enterprises. The paper examines incest as a trope for inflicting everlasting trauma and seeks to locate if amelioration is at all achievable for the abused 'body'. The intended study further interrogates the placid indifference of the contemporaneous behavioural patterns of the societal institutional bodies of family, religion, and law, while encountering the forever forbidden taboo of incest.