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?
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.
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
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.
Doctor fastus by marlowe , either mephistopheles, or faust himself
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.
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.
Last edited by Clopin; 03-10-2015 at 09:55 PM.
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
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.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
Ah come on, Rochester isn't evil!
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
I agree. I liked him better with eyes.Originally Posted by Clopin
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?)
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
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
tailor
who am I but a stitch in time
what if I were to bare my soul
would you see me origami
7-8-2015
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.
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
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.
Exactly.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
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.
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
I agree. Though Wide Sargasso Sea makes a pretty good argument for Rochester's being, if not outright evil, fairly malicious.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
