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Thread: the bad guy in literature

  1. #1
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Question the bad guy in literature

    what about the bad girl??

    just looking for some ideas
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  2. #2
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    Just do anything that come to your mind, Cacian, and you will be a good bad girl

  3. #3
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Just do anything that come to your mind, Cacian, and you will be a good bad girl
    LOL but how?
    I feel a man is victimised and the girl gets away with it.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  4. #4
    somewhere else Helga's Avatar
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    In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier the title character was not a very good person and neither was the maid, don't remember her name.

    there is a great book called The Monstrous feminine about bad and evil women, it's a very good book. Grendel's mother in Beowulf is very evil, but I did pity her in the original poem but in movies based on the poem she is usually seen as an evil women who uses men to get what she wants, often in a sexual way.
    I hope death is joyful, and I hope I'll never return -Frida Khalo

    If I seem insensitive to what you are going through, understand it's the way I am- Mr. Spock

    Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. - Baudelaire

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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    LOL but how?
    I feel a man is victimised and the girl gets away with it.
    how?

    have you been reading 50 shades recently?

  6. #6
    Card-carrying Medievalist Lokasenna's Avatar
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    Milady de Winter? She's a truly great female literary villain. And, of course, Morgan le Fey is the eternal thorn in King Arthur's side...
    "I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche

  7. #7
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    how?

    have you been reading 50 shades recently?
    no I have not read that.
    am I missing something?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  8. #8
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
    Milady de Winter? She's a truly great female literary villain. And, of course, Morgan le Fey is the eternal thorn in King Arthur's side...
    Loka thank you.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  9. #9
    Registered User Sido's Avatar
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    Well there’s Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, The Queen in Cymbeline, Professor Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter, Rachel in My cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, The White Witch in Narnia and Meda in Meda by Euripides.

    As for Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, even though her behavior towards the new Mrs. De Winter was not justifiable, I still did feel sorry for her. After all she had been very attached to Rebecca and the marriage to the new bride had been very sudden.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    no I have not read that.
    am I missing something?
    No, not really

    There is plenty of Bad Girls: Circe, Helen, Mirrha, Dalilah, Djanira, Baba Yaga, Lamia, Lilith, Cathy from Wutthering Heights, almost every woman inside the stories told by Scheherazade, Carmilla, a collection of witches, evil faeries and stepmothers inside faery tales, Madame Defarge from Tale of two cities, Gagool from King Solomon's Mine...

  11. #11
    The Poetic Warrior Dark Muse's Avatar
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    Cathy From East of Eden I think makes a pretty good bad girl.

    And though personally I like her, some might consider Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair to be a bad girl.

    Another who I quite like but others might consider bad is Clytemnestra from The Oresteia

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

  12. #12
    Seasider
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    Mildred in "Of Human Bondage" by WS Maugham.Especially as played by Bette Davis in the film.

  13. #13
    The Poetic Warrior Dark Muse's Avatar
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    A couple of others I just thought of

    Matilda from The Monk

    and I don't know how I could have forotten her before

    Marquise de Merteuil from Dangerous Laiasons

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

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    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    Don't forget Cruella de Ville from 101 Dalmatians.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

  15. #15
    The Poetic Warrior Dark Muse's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kev67 View Post
    Don't forget Cruella de Ville from 101 Dalmatians.
    Now that you mention that, Fairy Tales in general offer a plethora of villainous females

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

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