Top 5 wrongs, misdeeds, and depravity done by fictional women
God forbid women do anything, but also: how dare you make me choose only 5? ❤️
I will not overthink it; I'll just hit you with my current ones.
Alexia in Julia Ducournau's "Titane." Her brutal serial killing (3 people and her parents) during the first half of the film gives season 1 Villanelle a run for her money.
Celeste Price in Alissa Nutting's (the writer of "Made For Love") "Tampa." Nutting has called her a modern take on Nabokov's Humbert Humbert.
Katherine in William Oldroyd’s "Lady Macbeth." (The script was written by Alice Birch, who created the delicious genderbent version of "Dead Ringers.") What makes her refreshingly different is her unwillingness to repent. Unlike Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, she actually commits the murders herself and does not lose her mind. She abuses her maid and manipulates people, using her innocent appearance to her advantage. Unlike her novella counterpart (Nikolai Leskov), she survives in the end. She's the cruelest of the three, yet she wins.
You say Patrick Bateman/Hannibal/Lestat, I say Dorothy Daniels ("A Certain Hunger" by Chelsea G. Summers). She's a food critic, she's a man eater, she commits murder as a tribute to gourmet cuisine and beauty.
Tatiana Moskalev in Naomi Alderman's "The Power." So we're talking about a world where teen girls gain the ability to electrute people with their hands and can transfer said ability to adult women (and intersex people). In Moldova, Tatiana murders her husband, who's the president. On the show, she seduces an innocent woman "Fingersmith"-style, gets the power, murders and frames her. Later, she declares a new matriarchal state that imposes several limitations on men, e.g., they are not allowed to work or drive without a woman's guidance. Men are humiliated, raped and mass murdered. (Sounds familiar?)
What do all these have in common? Oh, yes, they were written by women.
Don't get me wrong, I love the various interpretations of Medea, Steinbeck's Cathy, Ken Kesey's Nurse Ratched and even characters like Zola's Thérèse as much as the next Tumblrlina, but there's something about Gillian Flynn's Amma ("Sharp Objects"), Shirley Jackson's Merricat, Angela Carter's take on Lizzie Borden ("The Fall River Axe Murders") and Atwood's spin on evil (or "evil") ladies that just hits different.