Is Rowling's Incest 'Golden Thread' the Key to Her Cormoran Strike Finale?

Golden Threads
Last July, Nick Jeffery and I put togethera month long review of Rowling’s work in celebration of her 60th birthday (hogwartsprofessor.com/the-jkr-60th-birthday-pa…), a Kanreki party. Every day we posted conversations about each of Rowling’s works with Nick discussing a ‘Lake’ point, something biographical or bibliographical, and me talking about a ‘Shed’ quality of the work, the author’s traditional tools, artistry, and meaning.
That worked great for about twenty days. Then we ran out of books. What to do for the remaining days of the month?
We decided to talk about Golden Threads, the plot points, themes, and twists that run through everything Rowling has written. We started out with a survey of the fifteen-plus already identified by Rowling Re-readers and Fourth Generation types (see here (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/a-lake-and-sh…) and here (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/a-lake-and-sh…)) and then with more in depth looks at the ones that were controversial or more difficult to see. We closed off the month with the ‘Lost Child’ Golden Thread (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/a-lake-and-sh…) and the possibility that Rowling’s inspiration for the (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/happy-60th-bi…)Harry Potter (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/happy-60th-bi…)series (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/happy-60th-bi…) was the trauma of pre-natal infanticide (‘abortion’).
As disturbing as that Golden Thread was to many Rowling fans and Feminist Gate Keepers, there was another third-rail string we didn’t discuss, namely, the plot point of incest that readers encounter again and again in the Potter and Strike series as well as the stand-alone stories.
Incest as Golden Thread
Nick and I discuss the Incest Golden Thread on the fly in the conversation above about Strike-Ellacott fandom theories about Sleep Tight, Evangeline and the series finale. Here are some written references if you want to review them by looking at the books in question on your shelf.
* Harry Potter
The foundation crime of the Hogwarts Saga is the abuse of Merope Gaunt by her father Marvolo and her brother Morfin. The abuse in question in this children’s book series is not explicitly sexual. As with the abuse of Ariana Dumbledore by the Muggle boys, however, that Merope’s father and brother violated her is there between the lines; her trauma is so great that she loses her capacity for magic (as she does after her Riddle lover leaves her) and the family does not send her to Hogwarts lest their shameful secret be revealed.
No broken Merope, no Lord Voldemort, no Potter family murder and orphan Harry — no series. Though the Saga’s foundation crime, the Gaunt family’s abuse of its only young woman, is not revealed until Order of the Phoenix, it is the tragedy on which all the core conflicts of the septology are built.
* Casual Vacancy
Stuart ‘Fats’ Wall is the adopted son of Tessa and Colin Wall. A teenager in Vacancy, he and Krystall Wheedon are the star-crossed lovers around whose choices and behaviors the ensemble drama largely turn. Fats at the end of the book claims responsibility for all the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother posts by means of which the secrets of Padford citizens are spilled.
In the climax of the Wall family drama after Robbie’s drowning and Krystall’s suicide, Tessa reveals to Fats his personal history. His biological mother was only fourteen when he was born, an age that sadly means it is possible-to-likely that he is the fruit of incest. Tessa, a diabetic woman unlikely to carry a baby to term successfully, compelled her unwilling husband to agree to the adoption despite his mental fragility. Again, the foundation crime of this very involved story is incest, the abuse of a young woman by her family.
* Lethal White
In the first of only two Rowling books in which every epigraph was taken from a single work, the fourth Strike novel takes all of its headings from Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, a play in which suicide and incest go hand in hand, especially in the White Horse finale. The novel parallels its epigraph source (hogwartsprofessor.com/lethal-white-ibsens-rosm…) in astonishing ways.
The Chiswell family has its secrets. The Minister of Culture hires Strike’s agency to find ‘dirt’ on Jimmy Knight and Geraint Winn that can used as counter “bargaining chips” to end their capacity to blackmail him. He shares neither what information they have that they are holding over his head to extort money and revenge nor what Billy Knight witnessed years ago. If Jasper or Izzy Chiswell had told Strike this information in the beginning, it is likely the pater familias would not have been murdered. The biggest secrets, of course, are about the sexual relationship between Raphael and his step-mother and the step-son’s plans to murder father and eventually Kinvarra in order to be free to spend the millions he’ll make from sale of the Stubbs. Not quite incest, a step-mother in bed with her step-son, but something like it.
Rosmersholm‘s family secrets are if anything more disturbing. Kroll reveals to Rebecca that Dr. West, her adoptive father, was very likely her biological father as well. It is implied heavily that after her mother’s death Rebecca’s relationship with Dr. West changed from filial to sexual; Kroll’s revelation about this is something of an Oedipus Rex moment. Rebecca realizes that she had been sleeping with her father and the incest taboo crushes her ability to accept Rosmer’s overdue marriage proposal, a proposal for which she had convinced the ailing Mrs Rosmer to commit suicide.
* Troubled Blood
The psychopathic murderer and torturer of children that the police and public believe killed Margot Bamborough is Dennis Creed. We learn in chapter 8 of Strike 5 via the Peg-Legged PI reading The Demon of Paradise Park that Creed was the incestuous rape off-spring of Agnes Waite and her step-father Awdry, a man who wanted to kill the child at birth but which the mother prevented (to her eventual regret). Awdry abused the boy all through his childhood, especially after Agnes’ escape as a young woman (reminiscent of Peggy Nancarrow’s flight from St Mawes). Troubled Blood is haunted by the victims of Creed’s madness, all of whose deaths can be traced back to Awdry’s violent sexual violation of his step-daughter.
* Hallmarked Man
The mystery Cormoran Strike agrees with no little hesitation to try to solve is ‘What happened to Rupert Fleetwood?’ Decima Longcaster Mullins, mother of Fleetwood’s son Lion, believes her baby-daddy was the unidentifiable murdered man in the Ramsey Silver Vault. We learn before that victim’s identity is revealed that Fleetwood fled the UK after he learned that the woman he loved was his half-sister and his son the product of unwitting incest. Rowling-Galbraith reveals only in the epilogue that Ian Griffiths murdered Tyler Powell because the young man was determined to rescue the young woman living with Griffith as his daughter who was pregnant with his child. Once again, the foundation crimes of a Rowling work turn on the intentional sexual abuse of a girl by a father-figure, here compounded by an Oedipus Rex like incest-in-ignorance episode.
Incest Notes
* Fantastic Beasts
As in the Harry Potter novels, there are no explicitly incestuous relationships in the Fantastic Beasts screenplays. The conception of Leta Lestrange, however, checks the ‘rape,’ ‘power abuse,’ and ‘inter-family’ boxes of father-daughter incest nightmare.
Her mother, Laurena Kama, was desired by Corvus Lestrange III even though she was married to Mustafa and the mother of Yusof. Corvus compelled her by the Imperius Curse to join …