Four Bad Women
Among the female characters in many fictional English novels I have read, four women stand out as the worst villains.
I have read many stories. Many protagonists in these stories are men and many of them are women. Many are good and heroes or heroines. Many of them are bad and villains. In comparing these characters, it occurred to me one day that a good way to describe the similarities and differences of these characters is follow Leo Tolstoy’s opening in Anna Karenina: All bad men are alike, every bad woman is bad in her own way.
Indeed, most of the villains are men. Many of them are really bad, many of them are ruthless killers, crafty murders, or in general just despicable in their behavior and personality. When the villains are women, many of them exhibit the same kind of villainess as those bad men, and yet many of them are uniquely outstanding in their own ways to become noted bad women.
Mildred Rogers
Mildred Rogers in Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage is one of such bad women. I have briefly given this character an analysis in one of my previously written book reviews on the whole book. Here, she has been nominated as being one of the four worst women and she is to be compared against the other three women.
Mildred Rogers, an average looking girl to most people but attractive enough to our protagonist Philip Carey so that he fell madly in love with her after meeting her in one of Philip’s favorite restaurants. From the beginning, this love affair was mostly one sided. Mildred remained cool to Philip’s advances but managed to always have him hooked on to her. Just like many other lovers, Philip was frustrated by her attitude but could not get away from her. In this affair, she knew men and she knew how to keep men around so that they were willing to do anything for her. She didn’t love Philip, but she didn’t tell this to him because he was useful to her. In the end, he went all out trying to woo her. He spent lavishly on her and almost went broke because of the spending, but she still married someone else.
Mildred later found that she needed Philip again despite the fact that Philip was already in love with another woman. This time the woman loved Philip more than Philip loved her. Without the interference of Mildred, they could have married. But Philip, upon seeing his real love again, broke away from his present lover. Mildred came to Philip for help, not for love. Her purpose was clear and straightforward, but her ways of obtaining what she wanted was not that straight. More than last time, she gave Philip that impression that she could love him. Philip fell in the trap again. It didn’t matter even if he knew this was a trap, he was willing to do anything to win her heart. He almost succeeded before she betrayed him again and went away with one of Philip’s best friends.
Philip now hated Mildred more than he loved her. London was a big city but destiny brought them together again. Philip showed no love to Mildred but being kind hearted, he helped her again. Mildred still didn’t love Philip, but she needed him even more than before. Now it was her turn to beg him for love, although the motivation is still about taking advantage of her target. But Philip’s love toward her died a long time ago and could not be resuscitated by her appeals. They even managed to live together and Philip even fell in love with her baby daughter. But a dead love is just like a dead person, it is gone and wouldn’t come back, not even as a ghost.
Mildred was enraged, she destroyed everything Philip had and went away. She ended up as a prostitute and disappeared in the miserable life she created for herself, despite the repeated help from Philip, as a lover and later a friend.
Mildred was bad in the most typical way of being bad as a woman. Her style of bad was very feminine. She wasn’t a murder, a thief, or did anything that would really harm the society and people around her, except Philip. She was bad to Philip simply because she found that she could use him. Many women are bad in this aspect, even many men are bad in a one-sided love affair. They just cannot straightforwardly tell the other person that they don’t love them. They use them and cheat on the love adored on them by the other side until they can cheat no longer. Mildred is bad by a few degrees more because she used and cheated no only once, but twice, thrice, and more.
Mildred is on the list of bad women for being bad in the most typical feminine style. Every bad woman is bad in her own way and Mildred represented a large majority of bad women who are bad conventionally and unimaginatively. She deserves on the list because she practiced the worst characteristics of feminine evil spirits to the fullest.
Zeena Frome
Our next candidate is Zeena Frome, the wife of Ethan Frome in Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome. Zeena was bad. She didn’t love her hu*****and and destroyed her hu*****and’s life, his lover’s life, and her own life.
In the beginning Zeena might have loved her hu*****and, a farmer, who married her due largely to his gratitude toward the care Zeena given to his mother when she fell ill. Years of dull and monotonous farm life might have cooled the marriage. Then a girl appeared, who was Zeena’s relative. Her name is Mattie Silver. She was destitute and needed help. She boarded with Zeena and worked as a servant in the household. Love grew out between her and Ethan. The love was genuine and for the most part spiritual that reflected the social background of late 19th century New England country life.
Zeena became jealous, which should be considered normal and rightful for her. Women have their own ways of showing their jealousy to the world. Many women choose to bring everything out and confront the parties involved. They throw their wraths to their targets and for the most part don’t intend to solve any problems but rather to just exhale their anger. But Zeena didn’t opt to that method, she worked quietly to try to split the two.
Ethan’s love toward had a sexual element. A man whole married a chronically sick woman would find it very hard to distance himself from a healthy young girl who was full of youthful vitality. But a large part of Ethan’s love toward this young woman was also the helplessness of her situation. She had no money, no direct relatives, and nowhere to go if she was asked to leave. Ethan would have no doubt loyal to Zeena as a hu*****and even with Mattie remained to live with them. Edith Wharton described mostly a highly spiritual and humanitarian love affair. But to Zeena, Mattie was an eye sore in every way. She was determined to kick Mattie out.
Realizing that their love was going to a dead end, Ethan and Mattie decided to kill themselves. But they didn’t die and Mattie was paralyzed. Zeena found herself tending to Mattie instead for the rest of her life.
Zeena didn’t do many things to hurt Ethan, but her spirit was dark and she was pitiless toward Mattie. Ethan shouldn’t have an affair with Mattie. But Zeena also needed to realize that her hu*****and was a young man, who for years had cared for his farm and his sick wife. He worked hard as a farmer and loyal and faithful as a hu*****and. Zeena was given a task that would have taken the wisdom and intelligent of above average woman to carry out and a problem that would require dexterous skills to solve. Because of the people involved in the issue, which was not impossible to resolve, Zeena had her opportunities. But instead of trying to solve this problem, she chose to worsen it by trying to force everyone to obey her. She made herself the queen of the household and didn’t for a moment think for the welfare of her hu*****and and her relative.
Zeena as a villainous character is not easy to blame. Every woman in that situation has the right to be jealous and the right to stop the affair. She was bad not because of her exercising her rights, but because of her evil attitude toward the problem and the people. From the beginning she didn’t try to make things better but rather in every of her effort she made the situation to grow worse. In her heart she was merciless toward Mattie. She refused to acknowledge the humanitarian spirit of her hu*****and’s love to Mattie. She decided to destroy them both and didn’t flinch during the whole course.
Madame Defarge
A Tale of Two Cities is one of Dicken’s best and most famous novels. It may be even one of the best novels of all time in English and other languages. The stories about love, hatred, and the ultimate sacrifice have moved millions of readers throughout history.
Madame Defarge, one of the revolutionaries who were ready to revenge when the opportunities came carried out their desires to the fullest extend. When people become enraged, their animal instincts could become such a dominant force that they can do anything to destroy the lives of their targets of the rage. Many people do things that they regret for the rest of their lives. Those murders of passion, have been used as defense in court cases. One of the convicts in Missouri was pardoned by the departing governor citing that the convicted behaved well and the original crime was crime of passion.
People do stupid and sinful acts when they have uncontrollable rage. These acts are typically ephemeral in nature and come and go in a short time. Acts that result from long lasting hatreds are often carefully thought out and executed.
Madame Defarge was bad, not because she was a revolutionary and she killed in revenge, but because she killed without discrimination. When she possessed the power to kill, she used it upon people whom she considered not belonging to her side. She didn’t care if the targets of her revenge were innocent or not. She set out to destroy the whole class that used to oppress her, although she knew that many of them might be innocent.
Madame Defarge was bad in a masculine style. She was as bad as a ruthless killer and was worse than a man would have done. She represented a whole group of people whose hearts were occupied by evil spirits. Their devilish deeds were carried out because they saw the heads they chopped off were the heads of the devils. They were in a feverish excitement, it was a revolution, it was the best of times for some and the worst of time for some others. Thus the killings were justified, any killing under that kind of atmosphere and emotions were justified. Madame Defarge simply did what the people whole thought the time had come for them expected her to do.
So when a woman wants to act bad, she can be as bad as any man and do better than those men if needed. She was driven by her hatred to the final destination for all living creatures, just not the way she wanted for herself. She drove to send the others to that destination earlier but found herself having to go, involuntarily.
When anyone is possessed by a spirit to kill others, this person cannot be thought as good. Madame Defarge is on this list of bad woman not only because she was bad as a woman, but also because she was bad as a person.
Cathy Ames
A bad woman is the worst if she is able to outdo all others, men or women. She is bad to the last drop of her blood and by nature a devil. Such a being can exist only in hell but by some accident she somehow appeared on earth. This is the kind of creature named as Cathy Ames in John Steinbeck’s novel, East of Eden.
All the bad people could be really really bad, but they essentially still were born as human beings. But this Cathy Ames was truly born as a devil, who had a human appearance with a devil’s heart that pumped a devil’s blood in her body. Steinbeck used an analogy to help readers understand the nature of such a being. Birds are born to have wings and able to fly. Humans are born without wings and not able to fly. Because we don’t have wings, we don’t miss them and usually we don’t desire to fly. For a devil, who was born without humanity in her constitution, she didn’t know what humanity was and wouldn’t miss it if she didn’t have it.
When I read the part Cathy bit Sam Hamilton when Sam helped her delivering her babies, I wondered if I was reading a macabre story like Dracula. Her eyes shone with the vicious light of a wild wolf. Old Hamilton saw that the first time he met her and he was right in his judgment.
In this world, on earth, people are punished for doing bad things. Bad people are not punished until they do bad things. In Cathy Ames, who came from hell, we have to wonder if hell had any laws for punishing devils for doing good things. By nature all devils are supposed to behave like devils. If so in hell Cathy Ames was a model citizen. She exhibited every qualification as a devil. The only reason that she appeared on earth was perhaps because she somehow got a human exterior. May be solely for that reason she was exiled from hell to earth.
Thus in East of Eden we get to know such a vicious woman. She was born to deceive, to hate, to murder, and on a mission to bring the whole spirit of a true devil to the human world. She understood at a young age the power of female sex in the society dominated by men. In middle school she destroyed the lives of two boys by luring them into a lewd act and exposed them. She enjoyed doing that and was glad at her achievement. She later in high school was responsible for the suicide of a young male teacher. Then her quest of greater evil deeds culminated with the murder of her own parents.
She met her match later when she was beaten to near death and found that the young Charles Trask was just as satanic as herself. But Adam Trask saved her. Her evil spirit hit a soft spot in Adam, who loved her for no apparent reason and never hated her even after she fled from him after just a few weeks giving births to her own twin sons.
She ran away and found her comfort zone in a whore house, where she murdered the madam and became the owner of the house. Her long streak of doing bad things came to a pause in this house. But she couldn’t completely stop from being an evil. She collected photographs of those people who came to the house and set out to destroy them. Just as she was ready to strike, she found that the dark underground was calling her back. Perhaps she at last found that as a devil, she want to play some humanity as a prank, so she left without doing more damage on earth.
Cathy Ames is perhaps the most vicious character of all stories. She lied so well that people believed all of her lies and took all of the truth she said as lies. She was the best liar of all. She drove men to kill themselves. When people became her annoyance, she got rid of them, even when they were her parents. I don’t know how in hell devils reproduce themselves. If they did in anyway, they must not reproduce like humans do, as some devils might be able to kill their parents before they were even born. So for Cathy Ames, that was just part of things a devil does to grow up as a full mature devil. Just like in the human world good people sometimes do bad things, in the world of devils good devils sometimes also do bad things, which turned out to be judged as good things by humans.
Cathy Ames possessed all the bad characters of the other three women in the list. She deceived men and used men like Mildred Rogers. She was vile and pernicious toward Adam Trask just as Zeena toward Ethan and Mattie. She killed more at ease than Madame Defarge although not as many as the latter. But what set her apart from all others is that she was a devil by birth.
I wrote this essay due in large part to the stories about Cathy Ames. Steinbeck was a master in presenting such an obnoxious creature to us and yet still presented a story of the triumph of human spirits. I wrote a review on other aspects of the book and the more I ruminated about the description of Cathy Ames, the more I felt the urge to single out this character to write about it. In comparing the four women characters I have included here, the other three all pale remarkably in comparison. But I read the other three before I read Cathy Ames, and at the times I read them I felt just as strongly about those characters as Cathy Ames. I attribute the strong impact on my thoughts to the great authors of those novels. In real world I have never seen anything close to these characters. Yet the authors presented them so real and so compelling, I just couldn’t stop writing about them. When people see a horror movie they get really excited in fear. But when they walk out of the theatre they see bright lights and familiar and friendly human faces. They saw bloody and horrific scenes that simply don’t exist in the real world. But after reading the descriptions of these four women a reader may wonder for quite a long time to realize that these are fictional characters. Let it be that these remain as fictional characters.
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