Whose the most horrible character in any book you've read?

[FreddoBaggyMac]

I've just finished 'The Help' and am very sad about it too [sniff] I miss Aibileen... Anyway I feel the need to make my hatred of Miss Hilly public. I don't think I've ever detested anyone in a book quite so much...

I thought I would create a tribute thread in her honour, listing the most repugnant characters in fictional history. Please help by adding entries to the list!
I nominate MISS HILLY from The Help as the number one entry.

I forgot, Andy the robot from Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla. If robots can be evil, this one is.

I thought Mrs Danvers was evil. I don't think Lydia from P & P was that bad. Never liked Mr Rochester. That inspector from Harry Potter. She was funny but horrible. Can't remember her name.

Becky Sharp is fantastic. Sly and manipulative but real - bridling at the injustive of the limitations of her birth and sex. Amelia Sedley, however, was a complete drip.

Lequeen Mr Rochester could have buried his wife in a victorian lunatic asylum (she was mad rather than just colourful or over-excited or exotic, although the brilliant Wide Sargasso Sea is more sympathetic) rather than lock her in her well appointed tower with Grace Poole. And how can you say Jane Eyre is "muted, demure and prissy"? She burns with desire and intelligence and strength. The bit in the book where she considers going to live with him in his villa by the sea. It's thick with sexual tension. You just know that Jane, for all her drab, quiet appearance, was all fire. I'd bet Rochesters riding breeches that they had some mind-blowing sex!

Oh and Tom Tulliver gets my vote too. I wanted to both burn the book and smash his face in.

Tom Tulliver and the GLEGGS!
If we're talking Jane Eyre, there are loads more - Miss Scathcherd, that man who comes to talk to her at Gateshead and then turns up at Lowood... Brocklehurst!

Lisbeth's rapist guardian in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Angel Clare, Dolores Umbrage and Bill Sykes.
Can I nominate God from Genesis?

at God from Genesis

Cathy Bates from Misery by Stephen King.

Golyadkin in Dostoyevsky's 'The Double' - constantly wanted to kick his ass

Harry in the slap
thingy's husband in middlemarch
and marina husband in emily (the 70s jilly cooper romance)

btw had a mammoth crush on holden caulfield when i first read the book, see if he came to see me after the end of his new york w/e i would listen, understand and make him laugh, we would then snuggle in bed together reading milton (was a very very nerdy 13 year old)

The baddy in Tiger Hills who kills the squirrel.

Cyb - I agree about The Slap. Pretty much all the male characters and some of the female ones are awful - put me right off the book, in fact!

I was sympathetic to some of the characters in The Slap the second time I read it. But I also hated some of them even more than I did the first time.

Another vote for Alec D'Urberville. Poor Tess.

Lavinia and Miss Minchin from "A Little Princess". Spiteful pair.

The psycho boyfriend in "Into the Darkest Corner".

Pennywise the clown from IT by Stephen King

Horrors

Lots that others have said but also Jonas Chuzzlewit in Martin Chuzzlewitt I think is very evil.

All of the men in a Marilyn French novel. So one dimensional and stereotyped.

Product of her time I guess but so depressing now. I devoured The Woman's Room and Her Mother's Daughter when I was in my early twenties now I just toss it aside and think yah da yah been done to death.

Though I guess she was one of the first to write about motherhood etc etc now it seems dated and tired...............not all men are bastards.

Another one for Angel St Clare. Wanker.

Didn't really like anyone from 'Wuthering Heights' either.

In Splendid Thousand Suns, the awful husband who makes Maryam eat a stone and the so and so who shopped the women when they tried to escape.

Definitely yes to Miss Hilly and Anna Karenina

Would like to throw in bjurman and the guilty Vangar (trying to not spoil) from "the girl with the dragon tattoo". Seriously disturbing characters.

Any of Jodi Piccoult's "tiger mother" female protagonists.
I would love to give them all a good slap and tell them to get over themselves.

Iago in Othello.

Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events

That bloody evil psychiatrist in Dragon Tattoo.... Teleborian?

Kennet in the Liveship Traders trilogy. He is a pig.

YY to Teleborian!