Haunting Adeline

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of violence, sexual assault, rape, stalking, child trafficking, and child sacrifice as well as references to domestic abuse, addiction, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A critical theme in Haunting Adeline is Adeline’s struggle in identifying her role in the instances of sexual assault that she faces at Zade’s hands. She alternately feels that she is a willing participant, that she instigated Zade’s behavior, or that she is legitimately victimized by Zade. At the same time, Zade struggles to reconcile his passionate hatred of abusers while becoming an abuser himself. Adeline’s conflicted feelings follow a well-documented pattern among survivors of trauma and sexual assault, in which the victim often feels shame and guilt, as though they had done something to cause their own assault. The text attempts to reconcile these feelings through what is unique about Adeline: her arousal in dangerous and scary situations. Because Adeline is aroused by fear, Zade is able to use Adeline’s arousal during instances of sexual assault as justification for the assault, or even as an implied consent from Adeline during the assault. However, arousal is not consent, and, as in other dubcon novels (See: Background), this theme seems to rely on questioning what consent is and how one might consent without intending to.