Incestuous Relationships
Incest is far more prevalent in fairy tales than I ever remembered them being as a child. The tale “Donkey Skin,” by Charles Perrault, features a King who loses his wife, promising her that he will only marry someone more virtuous than she was. The only person the king can find to fit that description is his daughter, and he falls madly in love with her, filling all of her requests so that she will agree to marriage. Luckily the princess is able to escape her father’s clutches with the skin of his magic donkey, avoiding the future the terrible future she was destined for had she stayed.
Terri Windling’s “Donkeyskin,” from her book The Armless Maiden and Other Tale for Childhood Survivors, the protagonist must escape her abusive father. The girl successfully runs away, and becomes a waitress at a truck-stop where her prince will hopefully find her. The evolution from a king who wants to marry his daughter to a girl trying to escape an abusive relationship resonates much more with the society we live in today. It isn’t sugar coated, and it shows much more of the horror that the princess from the original “Donkey Skin” most likely had to endure as well.
Contemporary society doesn’t condemn the use of incest in our entertainment. While it is obviously taboo, many people still love to see the incestuous relationship between Cerce and Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones, which is the tamed version of incest featured on the show. Craster, a character who lives outside of the wall that harbors “civilization” with his daughters and wives, would be the most extreme case of incest found in the show. Once his daughters grow old enough, he marries them and has more children with them, giving any boys to the White Walkers who could easily wipe him out. While it is still taboo in the show, it doesn’t stop any of the characters, or take away from ratings.
