Comparing Incest in Vanity Fair, Lolita and Annabel Lee :: comparison compare contrast essays

Incest in Vanity Fair, Lolita and Annabel Lee In modern literature there argon military personnely examples of incest. Incest is presented in the plots of many books. Of course it is non in its classical plant as it is in Oedipus legend. The form is changed but incest as such can be recognised . Here are two excerpts to display the latter. One is from Nabokovs Lolita, the other is from Thackerays Vanity Fair. I had thought that months, perhaps years, would escape before I dared to reveal myself to Dolores fog but by 6 she was wide awake, and by 6.15 we were technically lovers. I am going to tell you something very strange it was she who seduced me. Her age ia twelve. Rebecca Sharp neer had been a girl, she said she had been a woman since she was eight years old ... According to Freud the problem of incest is a subconscious one. Incest is always desired subconsciously. Its prohibition saves man from two aspirations to kill the father and marry the mother. A trilateral f ather-mother-child is brought out. This triangle can be used to show the transformations which in the classical Oedipus legend undergoes in modern writings. In the Greek myth Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. I avoid mentioning the circumstances deliberately because I concentrate on the triangle father-mother-child, which is the classical form under which incest appears. In the above mentioned literary works the classical triangle has undergone two changes. First, instead of son we have daughter. Second the mothers of the girls are dead. So the triangle is reduced to the lineal connection father-daughter. According to L. Stros incest does not always depend on the real, genetic kind-ship it also depends on the social connections among people, in the cases when a abandoned individual is raised to the rank of father, mother, son or sister. So in Lolita, it is also a case of incest but between are a deputy sheriff father and daughter. The similarities of themes both in European (in particular Greek and British literature) and American literature exhibit the cyclic effect in literature the themes are old and the form is which is new. It could not be said that a given text definitely belongs to a given country. The text has cultural influences which are not indigenous.