The Good Sister

The Good Sister is an exploration of the complex relationship between sisters, and twins in particular. Hepworth plays with the idea that while the twin bond is very strong, it can also involve emotions like jealousy, possessiveness, and vengeance. The idea is familiar in myth, literature, and culture. For instance, the evil twin trope is often used in popular culture, ranging from soap operas to science fiction fantasy. The evil twin trope—where one twin is bad or represents the alternate evil version of the good twin—endures because it shows the monstrousness of which people are capable. In other words, it shows that evil is the obverse side of good, and good and evil coexist. Sometimes twins represent two sides of the same person. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is an early exploration of the evil double motif. Mr. Hyde is the unleashed evil side of the good Dr. Jekyll and ultimately takes over the Jekyll identity.

The relationship between siblings close in age (thus, twin-like) is often fraught with jealousy and violence, as the biblical story of Cain and Abel shows. In the Bible, Cain kills his brother Abel, as he is jealous that God favors Abel’s sacrifice. In other examples, twins are necessary for creation and balance, such as legendary Romulus and Remus founding Rome and Osiris-Isis of Egyptian mythology engendering a new order. As the varying examples show, twins are considered either ominous or auspicious and sometimes have romantic intimacy (Osiris-Isis). In The Good Sister, the relationship between Fern and Rose contains many of these qualities. Twins symbolize the possibility of having a double or a doppelganger. They also represent the threat such a double poses. For instance, if someone’s shadow or double turns against them, it is like being betrayed by a part of themself. Rose perceives the potential for such a threat in Fern, that is why she keeps a firm grip on her twin sister.