"Attractiveness of evil "- help with thesis

[akashiya]

Hello everyone,

I've dicided to write my thesis on "the attractiveness of evil" , however I am not sure which approach to literature would be the most suitable, the psychological maybe? I chose Milton's Satan as a first example of somehow alluring evil character, Can you come up with any other piece of work that would be good for my topic?

[kev67]

My first thought was I Claudius by Robert Graves. In one part of the book (or it might have been Claudius the God), Claudius discusses four types of people: good but unpleasant, good and pleasant, bad and unpleasant, and bad but pleasant. His friend, Herod Agrippa, was in the last category.

Humbert Humbert from Lolita is a sociopath, but a very urbane one.

If you need something dating a bit earlier then maybe Richard III. I only watched the 1995 film version with Ian McKellen. Apparently, Richard was very charming and popular and nobody could not see through the front he put on; all except his mother who knew exactly what he was like. That was hard to believe because he seemed extremely repellent to me. It was difficult to believe anyone could be fooled by his smarm.

[PeterL]

What is evil? I have encountered many things that were very nice that some people called "evil". The things that I would consider to be evil are not attractive in any way, at least not to me. Start by defining "evil", then the rest may fall into place.

[angelusblanc]

Doctor fastus by marlowe , either mephistopheles, or faust himself

[Pompey Bum]

You might try Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses--or his feminine alter ego, the Marquise de Merteuil. I've always had a soft spot for Valmont, for some reason. Perhaps a woman might say the same for de Merteuil. But both are so bad. :)

[Clopin]

Heathcliff is more popular than he deserves to be.

From Dostoyevsky alone you have Stavrogin, Svidrigailov, Rogozhin and possibly Smerdyakov as villains who are interesting or alluring.

Mordred can be seen in a sympathetic light.

Loki is most people's favourite Norse God, despite offing poor Baldur.

Humbert was already mentioned.

Mephistopheles/Faust from most iterations, Goethe's especially.

[kiki1982]

Jane Eyre's Rochester can be called evil before his transformation into the blind treasure he is at the end. Terribly charming, but no marriage material in the 19th century sense. In fact everything that every mother would warn her daughter against.

Mr Huntingdon in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a lighter version of it this. Heathcliffe is the extreme of the Byronic Hero gone mad.

Mr Lovelace of Clarissa. Although I haven't finished the book at all, you're kind of thrown between 'Oh, don't be so unfair to the poor man', 'her family is exaggerating' and 'wow, maybe they're right.' 'Maybe not, he seems in love.' 'Or maybe not.' He seems terribly charming, but he's got a terrible selfish and ruthless streak.

[Clopin]

Ah come on, Rochester isn't evil!

[Pompey Bum]

Ah come on, Rochester isn't evil!

I agree. I liked him better with eyes.

[Jackson Richardson]

I have read Clarissa. Clarissa is probably too good to be true, but Lovelace is an utter sh*t of an English public school type who thinks everyone and everything should fit in with him. Repellantly self justifying.

But ever since the book was published he has been found sexy,even by the virtuous ladies who were Richardson's focus group while he was writing it. Unfortunately it is far too rarely recognised that healthy, happy and wholesome sex isn't very sexy.

(As regards the opening post, the classic example of the baddie being the most interesting character is surely Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost?)

[tailor STATELY]

Morgoth/Melkor, Sauron/Necromancer: "Silmarillian"/"Hobbit"/"Lord of the Rings"/etc, JRR Tolkien; Valdimort: Harry Potter series, JK Rowling.

See also http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UltimateEvil for more possible ideas.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[Clopin]

I don't think anybody finds Voldemort attractive to be honest. Snape, however, is basically a reformed nazi officer who stayed alive after the war by switching sides, and he tends to be most people's favourite character.

[kiki1982]

I agree. I liked him better with eyes.

I did lots of research on this. There is a very clear intention to depict him as a deluded liar and cheat who'd have dragged Jane down with him, had she not been firm with herself.
You might not like his second version, but the good Victorian husband was not someone who had had mistresses and definitely not someone who betrays confidence, whether it's trying to make the object of his 'love' jealous and leading another up the garden path or whether it is by trying to wheedle out private feelings by impersonating a gypsy. And he represented his case about the alleged denial of money to him totally wrongly, because an entailment only to the eldest son is still common practice amongst the higher classes in the UK.
Not to mention that he hid his wife intentionally in terrible conditions which were, despite what everyone tends to believe, pretty bad, even for the time we are talking of. In the middle of the 19th century there was an urge to treat these people. It didn't always work, maybe it didn't at all, but people were optimistic. It was only the misconception of Darwin's evolution theory that put a stop to the optimism of the Enlightenment and things went back to locking up the mad until they died. Charlotte Bronte herself knew about the new way of treating the mad, so she can only have depicted the mad woman in the attic intentionally as mistreated.
I could go on about this for a while, but the point I wanted to make is that Rochester is terribly charming and has the same sexiness and appeal as Lovelace in that he tries to corrupt and actually presents his case in such a way that everyone is fooled, including the modern reader, it seems. From a 19th century perspective, this is pretty evil. The contextual value of bigamy, lying and truth should not be underestimated.


I have read Clarissa. Clarissa is probably too good to be true, but Lovelace is an utter sh*t of an English public school type who thinks everyone and everything should fit in with him. Repellantly self justifying.

But ever since the book was published he has been found sexy,even by the virtuous ladies who were Richardson's focus group while he was writing it. Unfortunately it is far too rarely recognised that healthy, happy and wholesome sex isn't very sexy.

(As regards the opening post, the classic example of the baddie being the most interesting character is surely Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost?)

Exactly.

[Clopin]

There is a very clear intention to depict him as a deluded liar and cheat who'd have dragged Jane down with him, had she not been firm with herself.


Charlotte said that?

And hey, I don't think Rochester is a particularly nice guy and I find it bizarre that he's presented as super sexy in film adaptations; he's just not 'evil', in my view. I also tend to think Bertha is allegorical and not literal.

[entropic island]

I also tend to think Bertha is allegorical and not literal.

I agree. Though Wide Sargasso Sea makes a pretty good argument for Rochester's being, if not outright evil, fairly malicious.

[Clopin]

To who? Jane?

[entropic island]

Bertha.

[Clopin]

Haha, oh... fair enough.

[mona amon]

I did lots of research on this. There is a very clear intention to depict him as a deluded liar and cheat who'd have dragged Jane down with him, had she not been firm with herself.

I don't think Charlotte intentended us to conclude he was a deluded liar and cheat, but rather a basically good man who had succumbed to adverse circumstances and wandered off from the straight and narrow, but is redeemed in the end. Corny as it all is, Charlotte carries it off with aplomb, and what is more appealing than a redeemed character? I do not think it is the attractiveness of evil that's at play in Rochester's case, but the attractiveness of redemption. Heathcliff is of course a different matter altogether. He is both evil and unredeemed, which is why he has much less fans than Rochester. Of course he too has his fans - to each his own.

The blinding and mutilation of Rochester has shocked generations of readers. Most of us feel she need not have carried out his punishment for attempted adultery to its biblical extreme ("If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out...If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.), but Charlotte is nothing if not extreme, and when all the details are added up, no doubt this is a great part of what carries her work to genius level.


Charlotte said that?

And hey, I don't think Rochester is a particularly nice guy and I find it bizarre that he's presented as super sexy in film adaptations; he's just not 'evil', in my view. I also tend to think Bertha is allegorical and not literal.

But he is super sexy! I fell in love with him at the age of ten. :ladysman: Maybe you have to be female to get it. :)

[Clopin]

Well Hearhcliff is clearly evil and yet maintains plenty of female fans, something I've never understood. I do totally get Rochester's appeal though, even if I deny his sexiness (Charlotte always describes him as a misshapen and ugly man).

Jane Eyre is by far the better book anyway.

[kiki1982]

I don't think Charlotte intentended us to conclude he was a deluded liar and cheat, but rather a basically good man who had succumbed to adverse circumstances and wandered off from the straight and narrow, but is redeemed in the end. Corny as it all is, Charlotte carries it off with aplomb, and what is more appealing than a redeemed character? I do not think it is the attractiveness of evil that's at play in Rochester's case, but the attractiveness of redemption. Heathcliff is of course a different matter altogether. He is both evil and unredeemed, which is why he has much less fans than Rochester. Of course he too has his fans - to each his own.

The blinding and mutilation of Rochester has shocked generations of readers. Most of us feel she need not have carried out his punishment for attempted adultery to its biblical extreme ("If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out...If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.), but Charlotte is nothing if not extreme, and when all the details are added up, no doubt this is a great part of what carries her work to genius level.



But he is super sexy! I fell in love with him at the age of ten. :ladysman: Maybe you have to be female to get it. :)

He is put into an environment of ice and fire though, in the beginning, which distinctly references Dante's Divina Comedia where the deeper the narrator goes down the circles of hell, the colder things become. The redemption, which is indeed obviously the idea of the novel in the first place, is all the more evident because Rochester had gone off the straight and narrow for so long and was almost lost, but for the 'angel' Jane who came onto his path, if you will.

Heathcliff is redeemed briefly at the end, though, because he grows strangely calm and quiet. He first loses his frightening grip on Catherine and Hareton and from then on, he slides into a weird 'trance', eventually I guess taken to the other side by Cathy. In the beginning, her spirit couldn't get into the house, symbolising the closed desolation of the place, whereas if I recall rightly, at the end the window is open en Heathcliff has died with a smile on his face. I think that is redemption for you.

[edit] I forgot to add that misshapenness and particularly his blackness - and his ugliness - make Rochester the direct opposite of StJohn Rivers who is blonde with blue eyes and a Grecian profile. Charlotte Bronte was fond of physiognomy and clearly also intentionally gave her characters tell-tale traits. Ugliness, misshapenness and blackness mean he is in fact dodgy. Criminals were typically also seen as necessarily bad-looking. Despite that obviously not being true, in the 19th century even scientists thought this was a fact and therefrom concluded that black people and other Caucasian 'races' like the Laps were inferior. Although Rochester is very intelligent, as evident from his high forehead, he has a problem with benevolence. Not that he is malicious, far from, but he's got a problem with it. He won't do the good straightaway, let's put it like that. The remainder of his faculties don't help him either in terms of phrenology. On the opposite side, StJohn is blonde with blue eyes and a perfect profile, which makes him honest, open en inherently good. Obviously this doesn't mean StJohn is a more ideal man for Jane, but once again, it makes it quite evident what Charlotte's intention was.

As to sexiness, I for one prefer Rochester by far. Heathcliff is too extreme for me.

[Jackson Richardson]

Sauron isn't a character in Lord of the Rings - he's an off stage source of evil who never appears in his own person. I don't see how he could be regarded as attractive. Voldmort could be seen as tragic and certainly attracts followers, but I can't remember anything personally attractive about him, certainly once he becomes a snake.

[Pompey Bum]

Sauron isn't a character in Lord of the Rings - he's an off stage source of evil who never appears in his own person. I don't see how he could be regarded as attractive.

This may be a little off topic, but neither does Professor Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes. He only turns up in discussions other people are having about him, with one exception. Holmes once points Moriarty out to Watson in a crowd (they are in a carriage at the time). And from Moriarty's subsequent movements in the story, it could not even have really been him (one of Conan Doyle's occasional blunders). Aside from that dubious episode, he has no "real time" presence at all. Perhaps that makes a villain seem more enigmatic? But Doyle and Tolkien were both moralists, and like Sauron, Moriarty is never an appealing presence.

[HalInc]

The Judge from Blood Meridian is very charismatic, but pure evil. If I recall correctly, Amy Hungerford showed that McCarthy was referencing Milton's Satan when he created the character.

[Pompey Bum]

He's physically repulsive, though. I think Bloom sees him as the gnostic demiurge, who would be a fairly Satanic figure in any case. Personally I don't find the Judge attractive in any way, but you are right that he holds the party of killers in Blood Meridian in a kind of thrall.

[HalInc]

He's physically repulsive, though. I think Bloom sees him as the gnostic demiurge, who would be a fairly Satanic figure in any case. Personally I don't find the Judge attractive in any way, but you are right that he holds the party of killers in Blood Meridian in a kind of thrall.

I found him to be a very compelling character. The narrative seemed to take on the sick appeal of a car crash whenever the Judge had dialogue.

[Pompey Bum]

The narrative seemed to take on the sick appeal of a car crash whenever the Judge had dialogue.

Not my idea of attractive. :)

<----------

Vaguely related, though not really on topic: There is a scene in Blood Meridian in which the Judge carefully records some local rock art where the gang is hiding out, then deliberately destroys the actual rock drawings. My avatar is a photograph I took of Paleoindian rock art from the place where that scene takes place. It's from the mouth of a cave that provides a view of the sky, and is probably supposed to be a god combining the two aspects of the planet Venus in his eyes (somewhat like Quetzalcoatl).

[HalInc]

Not my idea of attractive. :)


Just think of the gawkers' backups on the highway. I think a fairly high percentage of the people can be interested and repelled in something at the same time. That's the appeal of the Judge. I hate him, but damn is he cool.

"This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation... The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos."

I read that and was blown away.

[mona amon]

but I can't remember anything personally attractive about him, certainly once he becomes a snake.

LOL. Actually I've never come across any Voldemort fans, even though he's described as very handsome before the snake transformation. He's just a cardboard cutout villain with no depth or complexity - an uninteresting psychopath whom you hate because he goes around murdering and torturing and trying to become supreme ruler of the universe, but who isn't really interesting in any way. On the other hand Rowling has created some pretty multifaceted bad boys like Draco and Snape and they do have quite a fan following. Even 'Luscious" Lucius Malfoy has his fans, but probably only after being played by Jason Isaacs in the movies.


[edit] I forgot to add that misshapenness and particularly his blackness - and his ugliness - make Rochester the direct opposite of StJohn Rivers who is blonde with blue eyes and a Grecian profile.

Rochester is not misshapen! Nowhere is he described as such. "I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though neither tall nor graceful." Translation - "He is HOTTTT!!!"

[Clopin]

Pfffft. Translation - he's an oddly square, grim, squat, dark man. Adele's mom also totally makes fun of him for being an ugly freak when he's in France.

[kiki1982]

OK, OK, maybe not 'misshapen' as someone without arms or a mouth that's crooked, but as Clopin says, not beautiful and short-tempered into the bargain.

I agree, he's totally hot, but not because he's handsome. He's charming, but not in a Henry Tilney sort of way (because he's nice, talks easily and just oozes fun), rather in a weirdly macho, domineering sort of way. He is masterful, Jane also calls him her Master all the time, and not in the 19th century sense alone IMO (as the master of the house). The way he strings his company along while trying to make Jane jealous is very hot and terrible at the same time. The way he attracts the attention towards him is uncanny. Don't forget he just decides Jane is going to marry him. In those days a man could expect a yes if he asked, but he also had to prove he was marriage material, that he could be trusted (after all a woman lay her life into his hands almost, if he b*lls it up, life was ruined for her too). That's why Mr Collins and Darcy's proposals are equally mortifying. Mr Collins doesn't want to listen to a no (it doesn't even cross his mind, frankly), clearly has no conception of a good marriage, and Darcy, well the only thing he proves is that he's conceited and will despise his bride. Rochester at his first proposal firstly leads Jane down a dark alley (I can tell you under the trees it is terribly dark, even if there is a full moon) and then takes liberties with her even though she hasn't even told him what she thinks. Practically 'assumes' that it'll necessarily be a yes. What else? He also knows very well that she has no-one to confide in, no-one to ask for advice apart from the housekeeper and she won't dare to say anything. This essentially makes her the same as Tess in Alec's hands, only short of that despicable act. She's young and totally inexperienced into the bargain, has no knowledge of the world or of men and he knows that very well. But he still tries to lure her into a false marriage and plays with her mercilessly in the beginning.

That said though, he did it out of misguidance , a kind of narcissistic need to be recognised as her God (which she also alludes to during their first engagement) coupled with a desperate need to be loved.

You forget that the Byronic hero Byron made a stock character (and Charlotte was thoroughly familiar with this) was destructive, charming, unconventional and brooding. He destroys other people's lives and his own. Only Bronte made him more acceptable by transforming him towards the end.

[mona amon]

OK, OK, maybe not 'misshapen' as someone without arms or a mouth that's crooked, but as Clopin says, not beautiful and short-tempered into the bargain.

I agree, he's totally hot, but not because he's handsome. He's charming, but not in a Henry Tilney sort of way (because he's nice, talks easily and just oozes fun), rather in a weirdly macho, domineering sort of way. He is masterful, Jane also calls him her Master all the time, and not in the 19th century sense alone IMO (as the master of the house).


Ha Ha yes, Jane does make a fetish out of it and seems to unduly enjoy the master/subordinate aspect of their relationship, but even with Rochester's domineering, imperialistic nature and his advantages over her of age, wealth, power and knowledge of the world, Jane still seems to hold the reins, if only just.

It is quite different from Alec and Tess. Tess is younger (sixteen to Jane's eighteen years) and much more innocent than Jane, and moreover she's vaguely aware that she's being pimped out by her mother, which adds to her confusion and makes her particularly vulnerable to exploitation by Alec. Jane never allows Rochester to exploit her. True she gets deceived by him, but that could happen to anybody in the same circumstances. She can handle him. She is always in control. The Jane/Rochester relationship always seems to be on the brink of danger or temptation or violence, and this gives the novel its edge, but I think a lot of its appeal for the reader comes from Jane's ability to take care of herself. Tess is a strong character in her own way, but too much at the mercy of fate, and therefore tragic as compared to the ultimately feel-good nature of Jane's story.