This post appeared in ROMANCING THE GENRES on July 24, 2020 and is still one of my favorite pieces ( and characters!)
So in deciding who my favorite villain is in literature, the only name that consistently showed up in my head really isn’t a villain, according to the book reading world. It’s a person whose actions are so wonderfully vile and self-serving, though, that she really must be declared a villain.
If you know anything about me you’ve probably already guessed I’m talking about Scarlett O’Hara.
She of the original resting bitch face, Scarlett O’Hara, is supposed to be the heroine of Gone With The Wind, but in my mind she holds a dichotomous role as pure villain.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, a villain is: a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.
Everything Scarlett does in GWTW is crucial to moving the plot line of the book forward. And everything she does can be interpreted as evil.
Cases in point:
She agrees to marry one man just to make Ashley Wilkes jealous.
Then she marries another just to spite her sister ( because the sister loves him)
Then she goes after Ashley again and lets everybody knows it.
She tries to trick Rhett into giving her money while he is in jail.
She runs a business using convicts as cheap labor and doesn’t care about them just so she can never be poor again.
She blames Rhett for the death of their daughter and once again goes after Ashley after his wife dies.
Everything she does is self-serving. She tries to convince herself it’s because she wants to protect her home, Tara, and her family, but, in reality, she is a narcissistic, egomaniacal, conniving, blatant manipulator who has been spoiled since birth and wants everyone to dance a jig at her feet.
If that isn’t the offshoot definition of a villain, I don’t know what is.
Yes, her life is tragic. Yes, she suffers loss in the most grievous of ways. And yes, she is a victim of circumstances.
But…it’s how she handles and deals with all those events that make her a villain in my eyes.
And she is such a delicious one, too.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 