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VILLAINY

                                                         October 1-6, 2007     
                                                                               
The virtue of villainy in fiction is often
remarked on -- our fiction descends from a
time when it was so tangled with puritanical
observence of the letter of virtue, that the
only spirit left in it was projected out
onto the villanous characters.

Anne Radcliff's "Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794)
could not be better crafted to undermine
virtue and celebrate villany: the main           DRIP_DRIP_DRIP
characters drip with perfection to the point
where they're perfect drips, her fine              Plus: endless very, very
sentiments and elevated sensibilities are so       bad poetry, purported
sappy that they can't help but drive one           to be written by the
elswhere...                                        main characters.

Into the arms of Montoni?                                   Thankfully,
                                                            this fades
    "Montoni had been otherwise engaged; his soul           once the plot,
    was little susceptible of light pleasures.              such as it is,
    He delighted in the energies of the passions;           picks up.
    the difficulties and tempests of life, which
    wreck the happiness of others, roused and               But unfortunately
    strengthened all the powers of his mind, and            it resumes when
    afforded him the highest enjoyments, of which           things slow again.
    his nature was capable.  Without some object
    of strong interest, life was to him little                Nothing like a
    more than a sleep; and, when pursuits of real             habit of writing
    interest failed, he substituted artificial                shallow poetry
    ones, till habit changed their nature, and                to endear a
    they ceased to be unreal."                                character to
                                                              the reader.
               Chapter III, Part II


                               True villainy:

                               A view of heroism
                               that can't help
                               but discredit any
                               heroism.

                               A quest for perfection
                               that can only paralyze.

                               All action left to
                               the domain of evil...


           And I think this may be the
           answer, the fatal flaw in our
           fictions, the reason a people
           raised on tales of virtue can
           be so utterly bereft of any
           interest in it.

               It all comes back to
               the impossiblity
               of virtue to the         Ah well, we are
               True Christian....       all poor sinners.

                                          (So there's no
                                          point in trying,
                                          is there?)



                                                    BURNING_CRITICS


                                                   
     "His character also, unprincipled, dauntless,         
     cruel and enterprising, seemed to fit him for the     
     situation.  Delighting in the tumult and in the       
     struggles of life, he was equally a stranger to       
     pity and to fear; his very courage was a sort of      
     animal ferocity; not the noble impulse of a           
     principle, such as inspirits the mind against the     
     oppressor, in the cause of the oppressed; but a       
     constitutional hardiness of nerve, that cannot        
     feel, and that, therefore, cannot fear."              
                                                           
                      --  part III, Chapter III 
                                                           
        Radcliffe is totally in love               
        with this character.

        Is it possible that she could
        have been unconscious of this?


               Maybe all those chapter head
               quotations from Milton are
               the tip-off.



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