50 pages • 1-hour read
Little Stranger
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Themes
Exploring the Allure of Taboo
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, physical and emotional abuse, rape, and sexual assault.
When Olivia and Malachi first begin their sexual relationship, Olivia fears that her attraction to her brother indicates some form of inherent moral corruption, even though there is no genetic link between them. However, even as she fears that her fascination indicates “something wrong” with her, she finds the idea of engaging in a taboo sexual relationship alluring and arousing. Even as her approach toward her relationship with Malachi changes, Olivia finds that a sense of taboo remains a central part of her sexual identity and approach to kink, and through her character. The novel explores the boundaries of taboo through both Olivia’s sexual experience and the reader’s experience of enjoying the enactment of that experience.
Though the primary social taboo that Olivia and Malachi transgress is their sibling and sexual relationships, Olivia’s journal (which Malachi reads) reveals a desire for other sexual experiences that mimic or reenact taboos. She fantasizes about various scenarios that involve consent in the guise of non-consent, such as being chased through the woods as a form of violent foreplay. Later, when Malachi kidnaps Olivia, she finds that his aggression satisfies her desire for forceful sex that imitates assault, even though she does not give the prearranged consent that is a necessary part of consenting non-consent. She offers no protest to the way he kidnaps and physically brutalizes her. Instead, she returns to Malachi of her own free will, as her experience of being kidnapped makes her realize that she still loves and wants to be with him. In her relationship with Malachi, Olivia engages with taboo that goes beyond their sibling status to explore the role of kink in her sexual identity.
The novel also explores the boundaries of taboo through the reader’s experience. The genre constraints of a dark romance put Olivia and Malachi’s relationship in the unclearly delineated realm of “dub-con” or dubious consent. In dark romance, this often includes play with what constitutes meaningful consent; in the novel, this manifests in Malachi’s reading of Olivia’s journal and enacting her fantasies. While reading someone’s sexual fantasies from their journal does not serve as consent in the real world, it is framed as suitable consent within the dub-con framework of fiction. Dub-con uses a double enjoyment of taboo: It draws upon the character’s enjoyment of sex acts that are not clearly consensual and simultaneously permits the audience to engage in a taboo enjoyment of representations of these sex acts. This lets readers indulge in the thrill of risk and the psychological appeal of exploring sexual taboos from a safe emotional distance. While characters lack this emotional distance, they—as evidenced by Olivia’s interiority during sex with Malachi, when they often reference their sibling relationship to heighten their pleasure—experience a parallel enjoyment of the allure of taboo. The novel engages the reader both in the taboo of the characters’ experiences and the taboo of enjoying reading about them, exploring the nature of taboo from a dual perspective that intersects with the reader’s real-world experience in safe ways.
The Roots of Possessiveness
In Little Stranger, author Leigh Rivers explores the roots and effects of possessiveness in relationships through Malachi’s developing and shifting connection with Olivia. From the first moment they meet, Malachi demonstrates considerable possessiveness toward Olivia. He pulls her away from their parents in the airport when the Vizes first retrieve him, clearly delineating the divides he sees in the family. To Malachi, he and Olivia are on one side, and Jennifer and Jamieson are on the other—no matter that Malachi is the newcomer and the other three are established members of the family. Young Malachi’s attachment to Olivia gives him a way to carve out a space for himself in his new family by creating a different network of relationships. As Malachi ages, this method of understanding himself primarily through his relationship with Olivia becomes more crucial to his identity. He becomes more obsessive and more controlling, while his characterization of his relationship with Olivia becomes simultaneously broader and simpler: She is, in his mind, “his,” regardless of the role she plays in his life.
As Malachi’s attraction to Olivia becomes increasingly sexual, he experiences little tension between the idea of Olivia as his sister and Olivia as his sexual partner. In contrast, for Olivia, these two visions of their relationship clash; she frets over the “wrongness” of their relationship even as she feels pain when Malachi describes her as not being his “real” sister. In describing Malachi primarily as “her brother,” she focuses on their siblinghood as the key element in their relationship. Malachi, by contrast, focuses on the possessive pronoun over the specific role Olivia plays; she can be both “his sister” or “his partner” so long as she considers herself as “his”—which is how he considers her, per his own description.
For Malachi, this possessiveness has a flattening effect, one that strips away the nuance of Olivia’s different roles in his life. Ultimately, he wants to possess Olivia in all ways, though he does not want this possession to go one way; instead, he reflects that he wishes Olivia could have direct access to his thoughts, giving her the same full access to him that he desires to have to her. Toward the end of the novel, Malachi recognizes that his desire to control and wholly possess Olivia arises from his desire to be the top priority and consideration in someone’s life. Despite the extreme acts that Malachi undertakes to exert control over Olivia—breaking into her apartment, drugging her, kidnapping her—he ultimately decides that this control is not as meaningful to him as a relationship that is freely given. He lets her leave and ceases his surveillance. This loosening of his grip on Olivia helps her realize that her own possessive desires rival his own, and she, as he wishes, “chooses” him. Over the course of the novel, Rivers illustrates that Malachi’s desire to possess Olivia is rooted in a desire to be possessed himself, and his approach to Olivia becomes more nuanced as he begins to understand the fulfillment of being chosen as opposed to exerting control.
What Makes a “Real” Family
With the relationship between Olivia and Malachi, the adoptive siblings of Little Stranger, the novel explores taboos about family and sexual relationships. Rivers makes a point of the fact that the siblings aren’t genetically related in order to walk the line between permissible and impermissible taboos. In the process, she perpetuates stereotypes about adoption that many critics, families, and real-world adoptees consider harmful. However, in the end, the novel highlights the close connection between Olivia and Malachi, undercutting the idea that because they aren’t genetically related, they don’t share a true sibling relationship.
Olivia and Malachi’s continued insistence that they are not “really” brother and sister arises partially as a function of genre; while taboo romance often explores transgressive sexual relationships, such as those between family members with non-genetic relationships, the genre does not typically explore sexual relationships between those who are genetically related. In effect, this creates a line between what the subgenre treats as appealingly taboo and what is too transgressive. While the genre accepts sexual relationships in pseudo-sibling relationships (such as adoptive siblings or stepsiblings) as thrilling, sex in genetic sibling relationships goes beyond what is deemed acceptable. However, the genre’s insistence that their relationship is not “truly” a sibling connection undermines the legitimacy of families built through adoption. Nonprofit organizations designed to support adoptees and their families cite this representation as a painful stigma that may make adopted children feel that they are less valuable to their families than biologically connected children or family members (“Breaking the Adoption Stigma.” Nebraska Children’s Home Society, 17 Mar. 2022). Further, the novel flattens the difference between foster siblings (who may be in short-term housing situations) and adoptive siblings, who are permanently placed with the families that adopt them.
Malachi and Olivia regularly dispute the legitimacy of their sibling relationship, even as they use that relationship as a tantalizing taboo during their sexual encounters; however, this does not necessarily undermine the novel’s framing of the pair of them as a family. The connection between Malachi and Olivia is presented, despite their unconventional relationship, as being far more “real” than the bond that they share with their parents, who are abusive and manipulative. This interpretation is also supported by Olivia’s relationship with her adoptive sister Molly. Olivia understands their sisterhood with Molly as being real, too, despite spending less time with Molly than she did with Malachi. Although elements of the novel clearly distinguish Olivia and Malachi’s status as adoptive siblings, ultimately, through the three siblings, the novel presents a “real” family as those relationships that offer support and intimacy, regardless of genetic connection.
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