Upon my most recent rereading of the works of Jane Austen (a necessary pilgrimage taken at least once yearly), I found myself struck by the species of villainy inhabiting the creations of this English spinster. More specifically, I felt the need to categorise and rank the various villains of the six major works. In doing so, I have grapple with, and answered, that most pertinent of literary questions, namely which of Austen’s villains could be crowned the most villainous of her works (and thereby most villainous in English literature).[1]
At the risk of toying with my readers patience, I will begin with some general comments on morality (and immorality) in Austen’s fiction. I can only promise that the black-hearted creation revealed will recompense your tenacity should you resist skipping to the end.
Perhaps the first observation to make about Austen’s works is the general absence of moral dilemmas. Her characters are never really face a true moral dilemma as in an uncertainty as to the right course of action. There is no room for the tortured introspections of a Hamlet or a Rodion Raskolnikov here.
Austen’s novels are novels of manners, and her depiction of morality is intertwined with good manners. What constitutes good manners or good breeding in Austen’s world differs naturally from our own society, but the social ability to demonstrate these manners is in Austen’s time (like our own) distributed unevenly. This leads us to our first round of villainous characters, but here the title of villain is applied with the very lightest of touches.
Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Collins, and Lady Woodhouse (to pick only three examples) are condemned to the role of villains only in the most technical sense. Like a drunken uncle at Christmas lunch or a cousin that takes a conversation on the weather as an invite to discuss vaccine mandates, they lack the self-awareness to realise that their behaviour sabotages society around them.
Mr. Woodhouse, to pick the most innocent of the three, would (if not for the judicious moderation of his daughter) be a social scourge to those around him. His obsession with his own health, and inability to imagine that others might not share his own concerns, would lead to dinner parties at which broth would form the first, second, third courses.[2]
Mr. Collins belongs in a touring exhibition. His character is perfect in every way. His only deficiencies are his social obligations as husband, father, and pastor – stations in which he simultaneously makes the strongest possible recommendations for caution in marriage, celibacy in the clergy, and more stringent oversight of ordination in the Church of England.
Lady Bertram meanwhile is the very embodiment of sins of omission were not she, along with her two counterparts, so thoroughly unaware of her own culpability as to be almost incapable of moral censure.
These characters are objects of comedy. They are unable to participate in the moral life of society because they lack both social ability and the self-awareness of what it is that they lack. Insofar as any tragedy attaches itself to their characters, it is only that they are called upon to serve their communities in ways that far exceeds their abilities.
Our next collection of villains does possess social ability. They understand the requirements of good manners while totally disregarding their purpose. Manners ought to stem from and demonstrate a charitable regard for the other. But social ability mixed with selfish disregard allows Austen’s villains to devolve good manners into a sort of passport into good society, signalling that they are worthy of praise while using the regard they achieve to service their own selfish desires.
Here we leave comedy behind for a more serious reflection on morality. The moral dance in Austen’s works is almost always between sincerity and façade. Her characters are tempted not by a Nietzschean will-to-power but a more Machiavellian appropriation of the manner of goodness. In other words, to be a villain in Austen is to use good breeding to mask selfish ends.
Wickham and Willoughby serve as our chief models of this form of villainy with Frank Churchill as their understudy. These three characters are probably the most charismatic in Austen’s fiction and they use this charisma to win the good regard of their fellows. Ultimately their manners are superficial and self-serving and mask behaviours that are ruinous to the characters that fall prey to their charms.
The sins of Wickham and Willoughby are most dramatically revealed in their sexual licentiousness. Yet without detracting from the seriousness of their various elopements and entanglements, it is important to understand that both characters’ moral failings stem not so much from temptations of the flesh but more from a thorough disregard for their fellow creatures.[3]
The distain with which both men treat their wives and their pecuniary motivations for marriage are indicative of their self-obsession and lack of charity (Franck Churchill, as a potential villain, shows a similar failing in his use of Emma as cover for his secret engagement).
Like Thanos wielding the Reality Stone,[4] Wickham and Willoughby’s charisma allows them, for a time, to shape social realities towards their own duplicitous ends. Their exposure by the end of the novel reveals something worse than the profligate; the liar.
The important point for our purposes here is to observe that the duplicitous manners of these characters does not merely enable graver sins. Rather it is their duplicity that is their most serious moral failing because it prohibits genuine human connection and charity. Fraud, in other words, is more grave a sin than profligacy.
Not for nothing is the devil’s title the father of lies.
Yet Wickham and Willoughby are pretenders to the throne of villainy. Their characters are saved from Satan’s maw[5] because their victims are either at least somewhat complicit or otherwise capable of resisting their powers.
Lydia Wickham and Sophia Willoughby share to some degree the moral failings of their husbands. Lydia, though silly rather than vicious, uses her husband’s looks and status at least as much as he leverages her honour for financial gain.
Sophia Willoughby meanwhile knowingly entered a loveless marriage presumably again for social gain. Her character is admittedly complicated by the fact that we know of her only through her husband’s words who, as we have already established, is a liar. The same complication attaches itself to his affair with Eliza Williams and so I am exempting this relationship from my analysis.
Marianne, the victim of Willoughby’s inconstancy, is also at least somewhat complicit in her own suffering. Her disregard for social mores allows her heart to attach itself with no surety of reciprocity. And this disregard for the mores that govern romance and engagement stems from Marianne’s sense of superiority towards her society. This sense of superiority allows her to disregard the thoughts and feelings of others just as Willoughby will come to disregard Marianne’s own thoughts and feelings.[6]
Wickham’s vendetta against Darcy meanwhile engages him against a social superior who is more than capable of resisting his pretences. His lies, though malicious, appear more petty than anything else by the novel’s end. His attempted elopement with Georgiana Darcy is far more serious offence and betrays more than anything else his utter disregard of others. Here at least, the morality of Georgiana[7] proves capable of resisting his charms.
So, while both characters fail those that surround them, the failings are at least somewhat shared by those whose lives become most entangled with them. We are not told if either character becomes a father, but one would hope, for the sake of their immortal (fictional) souls that they do not.
And this brings us to the final round of villainy but, and at risk of provoking my readers, before I present the head that wears the crown, I will pause to discuss the character that could have claimed this title but for the perversities of good consul and a repentant heart.
Emma Woodhouse is the great villainess that might have been. She, more than Wickham and Willoughby has the security of good manners and the approval of society. Her social status in Highbury gives Emma enormous power over the happiness of her fellow creatures and most notably in the life of her friend, Harriet Smith.
Throughout the novel Emma’s motivations for her interference in Harriet’s life are scrutinized. Emma’s own stated motivations is that her interference is in the best interests of Harriet. Emma’s motivations however appear to stem at least as much from vanity and boredom.
Emma’s influencing of Harriet to reject the farmer Robert Martin showcases both the Emma’s power over Harriet and her dubious motivations. Harriet’s acceptance of Martin’s proposal would have at once deprive Emma of the society of a friend, frustrated her own match-matching schemes for Harriet, and offended her assertions that Harriet was of noble birth.
That Emma errs in her advice to Harriet is clear. The outcome of the rejected proposal for Harriet is repeat tragedies of the heart and the very real possibility that an offer of marriage may not again come her way. While Emma preaches to Harriet of the pitiable state of spinsterhood, she seems unaware that her own actions place Harriet in very real danger of that same condition.
Like Wickham and Willoughby, Emma is gifted with manners that afford her significant sway over those around her. Indeed, in her case the blessings of good breeding are augmented by financial and social status. Like Wickham and Willoughby moreover, Emma demonstrates a disregard for the happiness of others and gratifies her own vanity and self-worth through the exercising of her social power. There is a very real possibility that Emma grown old would become a sort of Lady Catherine de Bourgh figure[8], self-obsessed and insolent to those around her.
And worse than Willoughby and Wickham, the victims of Emma would be her social inferiors unable to resist the relationship and innocent of the pain inflicted upon them. The public insult Emma offers the spinster Miss Bates offers a vision of this Emma, her gifts and manners perverted towards self-interest and vanity at the expense of those who most require her patronage.
Of course, Emma escapes this fate, and her repentance elevates her character. Moreover, one must note here that Austen’s heroes are most demonstrably good in their treatment of their social inferiors. Darcy’s character is significantly vouched for by a servant of the family and Mr. Knightly is at his most gentlemanly when he rescues Harriet Smith from the snobbery of Mr. Elton.
Back to our overall argument however, the formula for ultimate villainy is thus made clear. Our distilled vile of putrid villainy must first possess the social manners and breeding capable of showing to their fellows true charity, they must then pervert the very essence of manners in order to acquire the approbation of society whilst seeking selfish ends, and third, their victims must be those who require most of their charity.
Put simply, the worst act of villainy is to punch down.
Now I could keep this article running for a thousand more words as I weight up various contenders, but I’ll leave that to the comment section and skip to the chase.
Mrs. Norris of Mansfield Park is the clear winner across all categories. The woman is just plain awful. She begins the novel by arranging the adoption of Fanny Price by her brother (with Mrs Norris however taking the credit) as a form of what I can only assume is virtue signalling. The natural claims that Fanny has towards Mrs. Norris as her aunt and patron are thoroughly ignored while Mrs. Norris offers Fanny what can only be construed as psychological abuse.
Indeed, it is fair to conclude that Mrs. Norris perverts the role of adoptive mother to Fanny in favor of penny-pinching and obsessions with the status of the Bertram name that insists upon Fanny’s subservience. Her partiality towards Maria meanwhile perverts the role of motherhood in an entirely different manner which allows us to simultaneously accuse her of neglect, abuse, and over-indulgence.
It is, I believe, significant that if the worse act of villainy is to despise those who need most our patronage and care, the worst example of villainy would be Mrs. Norris as in her position of perverted mother.
One of the joys of fiction is the circumventing of the moral law to judge the sin and not the sinner. Were Mrs. Norris a living breathing human being, I would need to grit my teeth, forbear judgement, and pray for her soul. As a fictional character however, no such obligation weighs upon me.
I hope a piano falls on her head.
[1] It being a truth universally acknowledged that Austen’s works automatically surmount and surpass all competitors within her native tongue.
[2] I warn squeamish readers that this is only the tip of the iceberg of villainy.
[3] Characters whose immorality stems in the first instance from sexual temptations, such as a Henry Crawford, are not being considered here.
[4] Note for my *ahem* older readers, that’s a Marvel reference.
[5] And that’s a reference from the Divine Comedy. Note for my younger readers.
[6] I am not suggesting a moral equivalence. Willoughby by virtue of his relationship with Marianne owes her more than either character owes society generally. This is the same sport but different leagues.
[7] Georgiana’s character in this instance is proven to be the opposite of Wickham’s. She is incapable of duplicitous pretence when meeting her brother because she is concerned that her actions (the planned elopement with Wickham) will grieve him. Wickham is capable of duplicitous pretence precisely because he does not care about the feelings of others.
[8] Lady Catherine herself escapes analysis of her villainy for fear of offending Mr. Collins.
