Your Favorite Villain/s in Literature

[Jaakko Keskinen]

You can explain your reasons for choosing the specific villain/s, if you like.

Shakespeare: Claudius, Iago, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, King John
Dickens: Bradley Headstone, James Steerforth, Silas Wegg, Rogue Riderhood, Mr. Merdle, Henry Gowan, Madame Defarge, Miss Havisham, Fagin, Sir John Chester
Tolkien: Fëanor, Glaurung
Dostoyevsky: Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov, Smerdyakov, Fyodor Karamazov
Hugo: Claude Frollo, Phoebus, Javert, Lantenac, Cimourdain
Thomas Mann: Bendix Grünlich
Fitzgerald: Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Braddock Tarleton Washington
Goethe: Mephistopheles
Melville: Captain Ahab
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: James Moriarty, Sebastian Moran
Marlowe: Barabas
Alexandre Dumas pére: Danglars, Villefort, Edmond Dantés
R. L. Stevenson: Long John Silver
Verne: Ayrton, Nemo

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Adding scifi too:

Zahn: Grand Admiral Thrawn
Herbert: Baron Harkonnen

[vandermolen]

Nice thread!

For Dickens I'd add Mr Murdstone from David Copperfield, especially for inflicting the evil 'Double-Gloucester cheese' maths problem on Davy. Uriah Heep, in the same novel is also good value as is 'Wackford Squeers' in Nicholas Nickleby and Madame de Farge and Monsieur le Marquis in 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

In Sherlock Holmes: Charles Augustus Milverton is especially unpleasant but gets his just deserts.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Clearly it's Shakespeare's Iago. It's in the subtlety. Iago works up Othello to a frenzy of jealousy by continuously protesting that Desdemona is true to him in a manner that inexplicably sows doubt.

[NikF]

Lermontov's Pechorin - Villain? Victim? Superfluous Man? If he's the first of those then he's also my favourite.

e: regardless, at least he had the balls to live they way he wanted - and made no excuses.

[vandermolen]

Boyd Crowder - "Fire in the Hole" (Elmore Leonard).  Charming bad guy who is an old friend with the U.S. Marshall tasked with catching him.

Anton Chigurh - No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy).  Any bad guy who uses a captive bolt gun to kill (as well as knock out several locks) has to get my vote.

Judge Holden - Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (Cormac McCarthy). An enormous, pale, and hairless man, who often seems almost mythical or supernatural. Possessing peerless knowledge and talent in everything from dance to legal argument, Holden is a dedicated examiner and recorder of the natural world and a supremely violent and perverted character. Gotta love him.

I certainly agree with your middle choice although I've only seen the film.

[Biffo]

Nice thread!

For Dickens I'd add Mr Murdstone from David Copperfield, especially for inflicting the evil 'Double-Gloucester cheese' maths problem on Davy. Uriah Heep, in the same novel is also good value as is 'Wackford Squeers' in Nicholas Nickleby and Madame de Farge and Monsieur le Marquis in 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

In Sherlock Holmes: Charles Augustus Milverton is especially unpleasant but gets his just deserts.

I found most of the 'good' characters in Nicholas Nickleby insufferable and only had any sympathy for Ralph Nickleby. Mr Tulkinghorn in Bleak House is possibly the most chilling character in the whole of Dickens.

I have only seen the TV adaptation but agree that Charles Augustus Milverton, memorably played by Robert Hardy, is repulsive.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Nice thread!

For Dickens I'd add Mr Murdstone from David Copperfield, especially for inflicting the evil 'Double-Gloucester cheese' maths problem on Davy. Uriah Heep, in the same novel is also good value as is 'Wackford Squeers' in Nicholas Nickleby and Madame de Farge and Monsieur le Marquis in 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

In Sherlock Holmes: Charles Augustus Milverton is especially unpleasant but gets his just deserts.

Great examples (though I have not yet read Milverton Sherlock Holmes story)! Murdstone had a strong effect on me when I first read the book because I had to deal with a similar sort of situation at that time.

[Mandryka]

My favourite villain in literature is a character in Proust called Clarles Morrel -- he's so realistic, the nature of his vice is so realistic, I've known a couple of people who would behave just like him given half a chance.

It's years since I've read it but I remember being really impressed by Madame Merle in Henry James's Portrait of a Lady.

And, if you like more stereotyped and unbelievable villains, there's JHWH in The Book of Job -- what a bastard he is!

[vandermolen]

Great examples (though I have not yet read Milverton Sherlock Holmes story)! Murdstone had a strong effect on me when I first read the book because I had to deal with a similar sort of situation at that time.

Oh, how horrible for you. Sorry to hear that.

[vandermolen]

I found most of the 'good' characters in Nicholas Nickleby insufferable and only had any sympathy for Ralph Nickleby. Mr Tulkinghorn in Bleak House is possibly the most chilling character in the whole of Dickens.

I have only seen the TV adaptation but agree that Charles Augustus Milverton, memorably played by Robert Hardy, is repulsive.

Yes, in A Tale of Two Cities I find Lucy Manette, the heroine of the novel , to be rather too drippy to inspire all that passion in others. I do remember the sinister Mr Tulkington from the TV adaptation of Bleak House.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Oh, how horrible for you. Sorry to hear that.

Thanks! Don't worry, there wasn't any physical violence unlike with poor David.

[ritter]

My favourite villain in literature is a character in Proust called Clarles Morrel -- he's so realistic, the nature of his vice is so realistic, I've known a couple of people who would behave just like him given half a chance.
...

+1, and you've described him very well.  An opportunist, a snob, and a coward, but also with a strange fascination.

I read somewhere (but can't remember the source now for the life of me) that Georges Enesco didn't like À la recherche..., because he thought that character of Morel might have been partially based on him. Seems unlikely, though, as many  descriptions of Enesco are almost saintly-like...

[Mandryka]

+1, and you've described him very well.  An opportunist, a snob, and a coward, but also with a strange fascination.

I read somewhere (but can't remember the source now for the life of me) that Georges Enesco didn't like À la recherche..., because he thought that character of Morel might have been partially based on him. Seems unlikely, though, as many  descriptions of Enesco are almost saintly-like...

It's true that Charles was a violinist, a talented one, like Enescu. However Morel was seducing young girls and then passing them on to Albertine for her to have her way with them, all the time telling poor old Charlus, dear Charlus,  that he was spending his time taking Algebra lessons.

[Mandryka]

What about Iago, with his nasty racism and sexual jealousy? When I was at school they tried to tell us that he was a sort of Tudor trope, a stereotype of vice, but the older I get the more I see that he's quite realistic. Othello seems quite realistic to me too, stupid, gullible, violent.


The Tenardiers are also worth thinking about for realism.

[Draško]

Same as in film thread of the same question: Vicomte de Valmont and Marquise de Merteuil from Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, especially the vicomte.

Other interesting (rather than favourite) villains:

Flem Snopes and the rest of the Snopes from multiple books by Faulkner. More like a cancer or infestation than a human family. Scary.

Naphta from Mann's Magic Mountain isn't really a villain, more a tempter, but fascinating character. Similarly Woland from Nabokov's Master and Margarita.

Humbert Humbert from Lolita. Both protagonist and a villain, and deluding himself that he is not. Also his antagonist, the supremely creepy Clare Quilty.

I'll third Charles Morrel.

Lermontov's Pechorin - Villain? Victim? Superfluous Man? If he's the first of those then he's also my favourite.
e: regardless, at least he had the balls to live they way he wanted - and made no excuses.

Onegin falls in that category, and probably also Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Grey.

[NikF]

Excuse me editing your post to the nth degree - although I usually enjoy reading your posts as whole   -

Onegin falls in that category, and probably also Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Grey.

Absolutely, yes.

Cheers, mate. 

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Naphta from Mann's Magic Mountain isn't really a villain, more a tempter, but fascinating character.

I almost mentioned Naphta myself but didn't consider him really a villain either. Although, now that I think about it, I don't know if I would call Grünlich villain either. His worst deeds are some property crimes and being aloof husband and gold digger. Pretty standard. Merdle kind of too but I included him because he is more large-scale and his intense guilt both makes him a villain and makes me feel sympathy towards him. So it's kind of a double-edged sword, morally speaking.

[bwv 1080]

The Judge from Blood Meridian (but like other Cormac McCarthy villains, he comes across as some sort of otherworldly force rather than a real human being)

Kurtz from Heart of Darkness

Humbert from Lolita

Obersturmbannführer Dominus Blicero from Gravity's Rainbow

[vandermolen]

'Mrs Danvers' in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier has an especially morbid fascination (brilliantly played by Judith Anderson in the Hitchcock film).

Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray is an especially repulsive character although outwardly beautiful. I guess this is the point of the novel