‘‘Who’s Your Father, Dear?’’ Haunted Bloodlines and Miscegenation in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees

Abstract

Ann-Marie MacDonald’s novel, Fall on Your Knees, is commonly characterized as a feminist novel or family saga. Many critics, such as Juliann Fleenor, have recognized a connection between the female or feminine novel and the Gothic, in particular, that female Gothic is concerned with household dramas and threats to women. A quick survey of the plot of this novel leaves no doubt that it is Gothic: There is a family curse, a haunted house, a young woman in peril of sexual violation, a concern for family bloodlines, spiritually hollow Catholicism, a woman confined to an attic, several dead mothers, family secrets including incest, and orphans who learn the truth about their parentage. One might argue that Gothic conven­tions do not a Gothic novel make. However, these plot elements are not superficial but are an integral part of the story. Still, while haunted houses, haunted people, and haunted bloodlines signify the Gothic, MacDonald does not merely replicate past Gothics; she uses the conventions to illustrate how racial prejudices cloud judgement. The perceived sin of miscegenation, and the anxiety to prevent it, haunts this text and haunts the bloodlines of the families, generation after generation.