Does anyone have a favourite Jane Austen Villain.

[florentina1]

I am torn between Fanny Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility and Mrs Elton from Emma.

Also, while we are idling away a gloomy Monday, which Austen character do you most want to live with. I want to be adopted by the Musgroves.

I love Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she's savage!

Mr Eliot is pretty villainous, but all in all it has to be Wickham ..

I think the Crofts would be quite ok to live with .. ( just as long as you didn't actually have to )

Yes Wickham and Willoughby, each have a penchant for under your age girls.

Wickham! Imagine your life being married to him…😩

I think Emma would be fun to live with - gossipy and never a dull moment plus she’d fix me up with a keeper!

Under age that should read

She has written some great villains ... just adding
The Crawfords and Aunt Norris to the list..

But then some of her heroes are not terribly heroic .. Gawd... Edmund Bertram.. what a pompous twit.. I certainly wouldn't want to live with him . ..

And the age gap between Emma and Mr Knightley would certainly be remarked on now

I think Lucy Steele is overlooked as a villain. She is clever, cunning, and not adverse to lying. She jumps ship with the money and she insinuates herself into the favour of old Mrs. Ferrars by flattery and false penitence, and so becomes the old lady's favourite daughter-in-law.

@fourquenelles Yes, Lucy Steele is a well written villain and often overlooked.

Absolutely Its a shame that the Lucy Steels prevail so often.. but she did get stuck with the horrible Ferrars ... and of course both Mary and Henry Crawford lost out .

Another villain of course was the scheming Mrs Clay.

Caroline Bingley- I think we all know a woman in real life who puts others down and plays the “Pick Me!” Dance.

Mrs Elton though was really well written.. .and ww mustn't forget Elizabeth Eliot .I think JA must have known of some dreadful characters to imagine her villains.

I just love the way she portrays her contemporary society and its foibles

One of her best characters has to be Mr Collins.. Oh, and Henry Lucas .. both so deliciously funny..

Oh Willoughby for sure - I like my villains sexy.

That's tonight's TV viewing sorted...

Lady Susan tops the lot imo, a nasty, conniving, insinuating woman, i love her!

Definitely Lady Catherine - she reminds me of my late-MIL! Not in a behavioural way, more in the way she spoke: several times she would make a comment about asking me to “send my regards to your mother.”

Edmund in Mansfield Park. He's a pie.

I like the Musgroves, but they would always put their own daughters before me, so i think i would be happy living with the Crofts. Good, honest sensible people with big hearts. (And in very comfortable surroundings).

This is fun. What about favourite quotes. I love Ganny’s “people always live such an unextraordinary long life when there is an annuity to be paid”. Also how the young Musgrove “ who was thought much more of when he was dead, than when he ever was when alive”.

Fanny not Granny.

Obstinate, headstrong girl.

I know it's just so cliche but I love 'it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of good fortune must be in want of a wife'.

I've read Mansfield Park most recently so I'll say Aunt Norris as my top villain, though Fanny Dashwood is a bit more subtle as a character. Mrs Elton may be awful but is she villainous??

I'd like to live with Mrs Dashwood once Marianne has left home, she always seemed a cheerful type and she's exactly like me - I am always planning improvements for when I am a little more beforehand with the world.

Wickham! The cad!

I also vote Lady Susan, but if we’re only including JA’s mature work, I suppose Mrs Norris, with a nod to General Tilney.

But then some of her heroes are not terribly heroic .. Gawd... Edmund Bertram.. what a pompous twit.. I certainly wouldn't want to live with him . ..

I did Mansfield Park for A Level. The girls in the class were unanimous in preferring Tom to Edmund. We all thought Fanny was a drip, too.