Poll Results: Villains we sympathise with

A little while back I posted a series on villains we sympathise with (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4), well the voting has finally closed and the results are in.

  In order of votes:

John Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility) - 22 votes (73%)

  

Guy of Gisbourne (Robin Hood BBC) - 12 votes (40%)

 

Carver Doone (Lorna Doone) - 6 votes (20%)

Henry Crawford (Mansfield Park) - 6 votes (20%)

Mr Elton (Emma) - 3 votes (10%)

Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Pride & Prejudice) - 3 votes (10%)

Mr Preston (Wives & Daughters) - 2 votes (6%)

Mr Elliot (Persuasion) - 2 votes (6%)

John Thorpe (Northanger Abbey) - 1 votes (3%)

Morris Townsend (Washington Square) - 1 votes (3%)

* voters were able to select more than one answer

I am so impressed with the results, and I am so glad that I am not the only one who sympathises with these villains (especially Willoughby and Gizzy). Thank you to everyone who voted and the next poll (along with an accompanying post) will be up very shortly.


With Much Love,

Mel xx

ps. sorry for the absence of images in this post, at the moment the images just wont load for me :(

Villains we sympathise with (Part 4)- Final

This small series has been so fun to research and write, it has been quite interesting to look at these villains who in many cases were the almost-hero of the story. Very often we can see how events and the choices of these villains have led to their demise and if only they had chosen to do the right thing, or fix their mistakes and mend their ways their lives could have been very different.
I hope you have also enjoyed these posts and that although we don't condone the actions of many of these villains we appreciate what these characters add to the story/movie and in sympathising with them we also learn from the errors they made.

Here is the final list of villains which will be represented in the poll.

- John Willoughby
- Carver Doone
- Henry Crawford
- Mr Preston
- Guy of Gisbourne
- Mr Elliot
- Mr Elton
- John Thorpe

And just to throw a female villain (I supose you call that a villainess) in the mix, I have decided to add:

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Lady Catherine is a villainess in Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice. She is a Lady of wealth and title and the controlling Queen of her relm. She is the aunt of the one-and-only Fitzwilliam Darcy and has her heart on a union of marriage between he and her own daughter.  Lady Catherine tries to frighten Elizabeth Bennet with her force, when she learns of  the possible engagement of Darcy and Elizabeth. She shows her true colours as a snob and tyrant and gives Elizabeth Bennet a run for her money, so to speak when it comes to being strong-willed. In the end, as we all know Lady Catherine looses - her strong words are to no avail, and in the end all she did was bring Darcy and Elizabeth closer together.


 And to make it an even ten I have decided to add:

Morris Townsend
Morris Towsend is from Henry James' novel Washington Square and is a great villain. He is a young man who has in a matter of a few years has blown his entire fortune. Morris sets his sights on Catherine Sloper a young woman of fortune and intends to marry her until her father informs him that he will disinherit his daughter if Morris marries her. Morris leaves Catherine (who by now is in love with him) and runs away subjecting her to her tyranical father. Morris returns upon Catherine's father's death some 20 years later only to be rejected.




Thank you everyone for your suggestions and comments, unfortunately I wasn't able to include all the villains, in particular the ones I didn't know all that much about, due to time restraints and numbers. But Thank you and I will definitely look into featuring them in another post at some other stage :)

Villians we sympathise with (Part 3)

A big "Thank you" to Miss Laurie from Old Fashion Charm (which is one of my favourite blogs, I encourage you to check it out if you haven't already), who has been kind enough to give us 6 more suggestions:

Mr Elliot

Mr Elliot is a villain in Jane Austen's Persuasion. He is the cousin of the main character Anne Elliot who re-unites with her family after a falling out when he married a very rich woman who was of inferior birth. After the death of his wife he desires to move up socially, to do this he reconcilles with the Elliots to gain higher social connections. Mr Elliot is very sly in his actions and changes his thoughts, opinions, manner and actions to suit whatever situation he is in. He also proposes to Anne with the intention of setting her up as his wife whilst still keeping Mrs Clay as his mistress.  
Personally I cannot even force myself to sympathise with Mr Elliot, I find him to be a slimeball, he is totally creepy and the only two villains I can think of right now which are worse than he is are Mr Collins (Pride & Prejudice) and Alec D'Urberville (Tess of the D'Urberville's). I am not sure whether I believe his admiration for Anne's character is sincere but I supose you could sympathise with him in the fact that he does lose Anne and is ultimately left with Mrs Clay who is just alike him in disposition and perhaps she will also play him just as she played everyone else.

Mr Elton

Mr Elton is one of Jane Austen's villains in her novel Emma. He is a clergyman who after being rejected by Emma literally runs-off and picks up a wealthly wife as if to shove it in Emma's face. If I had to name why I sympathised with Elton it would be because of his wife, although it could be said they deserve each other, or like many other villains this is in fact his punishment, his wife is a horrible character. Mrs Augusta Elton is much worse than Mr Elton she is a social climber, annoying and utterly ridicuclous. She is rich and constantly reminding those around her of the fact, she sticks her nose into everyone business because ultimately she believes everything is her business. She believes she is the best thing to come to Highbury and is determined to control every situation, ball, party and person! The information given to us in the novel about Augusta is not much however it is enough to give us an insight into the person she is, I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like for poor Mr Elton living with Augusta as his wife :)

John Thorpe 

John is a character out of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (my favourite novel!) and although I have never really thought of him as a villain, most likely because I like him so much, he is such a great character and absolutely hilarious, he can definitely be counted as a villain. John is, I think, one of those characters you love or hate as he is quite dimwitted, rude, obnoxious and always talking about horses or carriages especially at the most inopportune times. John is the chief instigator of all the trouble the befalls Catherine Morland during the course of the novel as he lies to General Tilney about Catherine being wealthy. I find it quite easy to feel sorry for John, particularly because he is such a hilarious character but also because he did intend to marry Catherine and the lie about her wealth ultimately brought her closer to Henry Tilney, the man whom he was contending against for Catherines attentions. We never really get to know what happens to John, his character disappears after he helps the plot in the right direction, so i must admit I feel sorry for him in the fact that he is a character who unintentionally points the story in the right direction but doesn't gain the anything, and is never heard of again.

The last 3 suggestions were:

- Mr Tulkinghorn (Bleak House)

- Mr Smallweed (Bleak House)

- Bradley Headstone (Our Mutual Friend)

Unfortunatley I don't know anything about these characters so I am going to have to do a little research on them before I post up their small profile. If you know of them I would love to hear why you think people may feel sympathetic towards them despite that they are villains.

Also have you noticed all our villains are males!? I wonder if in general we sympathise more with male villains then female ones? I would love to know any female villains you sympathise with?

*UPDATE (14/05/11):
As you are most likely already aware Blogger has had some issues the past couple of days, the result for this blog was some posts being temporarily taken off. Although the posts were restored the comments were not :) so if you posted a comment on this post I have re-posted it from the notification email I received :)

Villains we sympathise with (Part 2)

Mr Preston

Mr Preston is the villian in Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. Preston is in love with Cynthia Kirkpatrick and after lending her 20 pounds she agrees to marry him when she comes of age. At the time of the proposal Preston was significantly older than the 15 year old Cynthia. When Cynthia comes of age she professes that she hates him and refuses to marry him. Cynthia confides in her step-sister  Molly that she felt forced to agree to his proposal and that she was too young to have made that decision. Preston upset that she has broken her promise, declares he will exposed Cynthia as a flirt and jilter.
I particularly feel sorry for Mr Preston because I believe he truly loved Cynthia and he was very hurt by her refusal.



Guy of Gisborne

Guy probably doesn't fit in as well with the other villains I have suggested but I have to mention him as out of every villain I know of he is the one which I sympathise with the most. Thankfully I can still include him because he is indeed a villain in a period drama.
Guy of Gisborne is one of the key villains in the BBC TV Series Robin Hood. Guy is the adversary of the great Robin Hood who he is constantly trying to capture. Guy is a little obsessed with power and wants everything that was once Robin's and is prepared to do anything to achieve this. However his one weakness is the beautiful Lady Marian, who has a lot of (romanti c) history with Robin. Poor Guy despite doing almost everything to please Marian she plays him, using Guy only to get information which she can then pass onto Robin. As much as I love Marian, she does lead Guy on a fair bit during the series' and unfortunately Guy's love for her only grows stronger and stronger and to no avail.


Well with these two villains that makes five in our poll so far:

John Willoughby

Carver Doone

Henry Crawford

Mr Preston

Guy of Gisborne

What do you think? I would still like a few more, if you have any suggestions I would absolutely love to heard them. Just comment below :)

Much Love,

Tristans_Isolde xx

Villains we sympathise with (Part 1),

Here are two more villains which I think many people sympathise with:

Carver Doone:

Carver is one of the villianous Doones of R.D Blackmores Lorna Doone. The Doone's are a wild, lawless and brutal outlaws and Carver is their future leader. Carver is betrothed to the beautiful Lorna Doone and although Carver is able to have anyone he wants he truly wants Lorna because he loves her. However Lorna doesn't reciprocate these feelings, as she is in love with another man, John Ridd. Carver is extremely jealous and risks his life, that of the Doone's and jeopardises the future and the existance of the Doone hideout in order to get Lorna back from John. Carver's love for Lorna totally overtakes him and is eventually the death of him. In his last moments he is sinking in a bog and refuses to take the staff which is extended out to him by John Ridd.
Carvers life is a tragic one, he loved but never felt love, he saw everything that the generations before him work for their entire lives collapse before his eyes only after a short time in his command. However Carver's final moments show his spirit in the fact that he would never give up or give in.

Henry Crawford:

Henry Crawford is one of the key characters in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Along with his sister Mary, he causes a lot of havoc within the Bertram/Price family. After failing to snap-up one of the Bertram sisters- Maria Betram, Henry settles upon their un-appreciated cousin simply to amuse himself and with every intention of making her fall in love with him. However Henry, in his pursuits is the one who falls in love, and reforms himself entirely to show Fanny how seerious he is about her. When reading the book (which is one of my favourites) I really don't like the character of Henry however I think he does give an effort to change for the sake of Fanny. He goes to a lot of trouble to prove his love is not inconstant and unfortunately despite everything his does fall short and his proposals to Fanny are rejected.

Henry is, pehaps considered a villain we sympathise with because when he tries to change and prove his feelings are true, he is rejceted and humilliated. Although I do not agree with his actions after (or before for that matter) he fall in love with Fanny (running off with the married Maria Betram) I can understand his disappointments may lead him this way. And I do believe Fanny's refusal hurt him alot.

Can you think of any other villains we may sympathise with?

Which villains do you sympathise with?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about villains (most likely due to the fact that I have been discussing the villains of The Abduction Club over at my other blog) and I have realised that I don't dislike all villains actually I rather sympathise with a lot of them. With that said I thought it would be interesting to, over the next week, compile a list of villains or antagonists in period dramas/ classic novels with whom we sympathise with.

Here is my first suggestion:

Mr Willoughby:

John Willoughby is a character from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. He is one of those characters who is his own worst enemy and that is why I feel sorry for him. It is only himself that he can blame for the events that transpired throughout the novel and he knows this. I believe that despite his past actions, which of course I do not condone, he tried to change - because he truly loved Marianne Dashwood. He had every intention of marrying her but when  his past was exposed and his world came crashing down about him he could not cope with the possibility of poverty. It was this desire for wealth and status and his own vanity which were the driving motivation for his leaving Marianne. Also perhaps he believed that Marianne would not have forgiven him for what he had done in the past (just a thought). In order to prevent what he thought was his life falling apart before his eyes, John married the respectable Miss Grey- with fifty thousand pounds and this marriage was indeed his punishment,

 "If you can pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was then. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman!"  (chapt.44)

Although John's obvious punishment is that of his marriage to Miss Grey, I think what is the worse punishment is the emotional one - the fact that he once had possession of love and lost it. He knew what it was like to be loved and to love and because of his own vanity lost it all, and knowing that never again would he possess all that was dear to him, or ever feel that feeling again. It's tragic and I believe what redeems him as a character is that he shows remorse and blames himself entirely for what he has done.

"But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost everything that could make it a blessing."  (chapt. 44)

I will post more up for you to see during the week and once the list is big enough I will put it up into a poll and we can see who is generally acknowlegded as the villain/antagonist we sympathise with the most.

I would love to have your thoughts and suggestions on which villains/antagonists you sympathise with!