The paper mainly focuses on addressing two questions ‘What are the protagonist’s violence experiences?’ and ‘What are the factors that served to reinforce and prolong the protagonist’s oppressive marriage?’. The model highlighted for the purpose of examination is Catherine, the protagonist of Elizabeth Haynes’ novel Into the Darkest Corner. trigger positive counteraction and lead to the liberation of the silenced protagonist in Elizabeth Haynes’ novel Into the Darkest Corner. The central contribution of this paper lies in highlighting particularity rather than sameness when investigating how oppression and male domination could function as factors that. This paper investigates how a survivor of a violent marital relationship could awaken and take positive counteraction against her oppressive husband, rather than remaining entrapped in a state of ‘learned helplessness’.

A central concern to the researcher in this article is to voice the victims’ ‘particular’ struggle and efforts to escape the incestuous relationship in which she is trapped. The article is thus structured around the exploration of two main research questions: ‘What is the role of parents in helping a victim of uncle-niece incest to end her abusive experience?’ and ‘what is the role of official institutions in assisting a victim of uncle-niece incest to terminate her abusive experience?’. The cultural differences are addressed in relation to parental assistance and institutional assistance. The main contribution in this article is to highlight the cultural differences found in eastern and western literary studies in relation to escaping or ending incest.

The paper is thus centered on two novels: Woman at Point Zero (1975) by Nawal El Saadawi and Uncle Vampire (1993) by Cynthia Grant. This article aims at presenting a cross-cultural examination of uncle-niece incest through the theoretical scope of feminist psychoanalysis in literary studies.

Into the darkest corner