Legacy of Cain, The (1888)
By Wilkie Collins
Can an adopted daughter be distinguished based on amoral behaviors inherited from her mother?
When Reverend Gracedieu agrees to adopt the daughter of a notorious murderess, the prison’s Governor advises him to think carefully before fulfilling the prisoner’s last request: as the mother is a killer, her daughter may have inherited her mother’s temperament. In spite of the Governor’s admonitions, Gracedieu ignores the possibility of the “poisonous hereditary taint” and takes the infant into his family. Within a year, his wife bears a daughter, and though Mrs. Gracedieu has no interest in raising the adopted daughter, the Reverend continues to care for both girls equally even after his wife dies. In order to deflect any condemnation his adopted daughter might receive should her ignominious origins be exposed, the Reverend devises a plan to mask her identity: after moving to a new county, he tells people that Eunice and Helena are the same age. With the same educational and religious upbringing, only inherent temperamental differences distinguish between the two women. When Eunice falls in love with Philip Dunboyne, her father refuses the alliance while Helena seduces him. The Reverend’s reservations are based on his knowledge of Eunice’s ancestry; the sweet, well-tempered girl is actually his adopted daughter, while the vicious, deceitful Helena is his natural child. Although Eunice rages at the injustice committed by her sister, her strong moral core allows her to resist the murderous urges. Helena, meanwhile, succumbs to her immoral urges, and attempts to poison Philip.
When the Governor and prison doctor caution the Reverend, they indicate that while some “tempers” are shaped by accidental influences, inherited traits play a significant role in behavioral patterns. According to the doctor, twenty years of study indicate that both vice and virtue translate into future generations, with vice presenting a more potent influence on those children’s development. With the adopted daughter, would inculcated good overwhelm inherited evil? Moreover, could the Reverend prevent the favoring of one daughter over another, knowing that one must always be monitored with a suspicious eye? In an odd twist, Eunice is encouraged to kill by what she later believes to be her mother’s ghost; this metaphysical alternative to inherited evil detracts from the momentum of the nature-nurture conflict. One debate that is raised, once the girls have matured, is the connection between physical and moral inheritance; while Eunice looks nothing like her mother, she apparently inherits her violent urges. In the attempt to find connections between physiognomy and inherited traits, Collins revisits theories initially formulated by Francis Galton and continued through the end of the century. The Reverend speculates that while Eunice may have inherited her mother’s evil, she also inherited some capacity to resist it; the strength of virtue over vice, then, must be the result of social conditioning. Yet the case of nature’s superiority seems amply illustrated with Helena; her mother, the “bad” influence, is demonstrably selfish but not evil, and having the same upbringing as Eunice, her malice must stem from some inherent lack.
Evaluation: Although not Collins’s best novel, The Legacy of Cain boasts ample suspense, a relatively focused plot and rounded characters. Once the daughters’ true identities are determined, the suspense rests on the other characters’ capacity to decipher this same mystery.
– Natalie Champ