Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Top 10-Greatest Bad Girls of Fiction

I have a theory, yet again.


Since I was a teenager, I have heard guys whine about how nice guys finish last and Blah Blah Blah. Girls like guys who treat them like crap, girls like bad boys.  And yeah, that's true in SOME cases, just like anything is sometimes true.  I won't deny that this does seem to be the trend, at least for younger girls who haven't figured out that marrying a guy like this is a really bad idea.  Note to girls: You can't fix guys, so stop trying.  Love them as is or don't try at all.  It doesn't mean you're awesome if you can get a bad boy to fall in love with you, it means you're stupid.  All men are fickle, and when he is bored of you, he will revert.  PLUS, you liked him bad, and if he goes good you'll be bored.  It's simply a bad idea.  Anyway, I have something to add to this, something that has been overlooked.   Guys, a lot of you like bitches just like a lot of us like bad boys.  A lot of you don't like sweet girls and if you get one, you have no boundaries and therefore take advantage of them and treat them like crap.  Seriously.  We have to TURN INTO bitches.  You want girls who torture your soul and keep you physically begging, just as we like guys who do the same thing to us.  All this does is make me want to become something that I have never been....a person who hides myself, stuffs my feelings, and pretends to be callous....but I will never do it.  I wouldn't know how to shut up.  One last thing, if this theory isn't true, then PLEASE EXPLAIN ANGELINA JOLIE.  Yep.  I know.  I am right.


I was telling a friend that I saw "Gatsby" over the weekend and we were talking about Daisy and how 2-dimensional she is.  I said that in the new movie, they humanize her a bit, which I liked.  There isn't any background info to support her or give a reason for her shallowness in the book or the first movie.  I have a theory that it's because she is a metaphor for the era.  Greed is shallow and cold, plain and simple, so therefore so is Daisy.  So then we started discussing other bitches of literature.  I thought about this a while and knew that this would be today's Top 10.   Things you have to consider when looking at the list.....Who is the author?  A man or woman?  Are they creating the women to be 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional and why would they do this?  These things make a difference. Did the authors give the women a reason for being a bitch or are the authors simply scorned men who are probably misogynistic bastards themselves and take it out on paper like Taylor Swift does with a guitar?  How do the female authors differ in the way they present these characters?  Do we feel sorry for them?

Let us look at the Greatest Bitches of Fiction, well, in MY opinion:


 1.Estella, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens.  This girl knows exactly what she is doing, because she was taught to do it.  She meets Pip as a child and because the woman who looks like a waxy skeleton raises her (Miss Havisham), she doesn't know how to love.  Pip is tantalized by her games and lives for her even though she will never be free to love him.  She is beautiful and uses her sexuality to reel him in. As soon as she has him right where she wants to keep him, she messes him up in the head and darts away.  I feel a little sorry for Estella because she is indeed, wounded, and she probably loves Pip in a way.  Nevertheless, she is written as a cold-hearted bitch.

 2.Miss Havisham, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens.  It wouldn't be fair to put Estella on this list without Miss Havisham, because she is the reason Estella is the way she is.  She has  stunted Estella emotionally and this character is totally two dimensional because there isn't a good reason why someone would be like this.  As I always say, you can't reason with crazy.

 3.Daisy, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. "Her voice was full of money, that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it…High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl.”  Ok, so first of all, Gatsby builds a life for Daisy and she wants to run away with him because she is a coward.  This crushes him.  THEN, this bitch lets Gatsby take the blame for hitting and killing Myrtle and then when he was murdered because of what she did, she didn't even come to the funeral.  Her voice was full of money because she was an empty, cold, bored, snobbish, bad human being.   Nothing anyone could do for her would ever be enough because she was soulless.  The only thing that I can say to defend Daisy is that maybe when you are raised in such a wealthy, shallow environment and everyone tells you what to do and teaches you to care about status, whether it's moral or not, you end up losing your soul. Still, no doubt that if Daisy were a real person, she wouldn't deserve Gatsby and would rot in hell with her snobby, rich, bored friends.

 4.Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.  I'm not sure there is another female character who plots more than this one.  Vicomte de Valmont is in love with her and therefore acts as a chess piece in her evil games, games that destroy the innocence of other girls simply because she enjoys it.  For those of you who have never read this book, the movie "Cruel Intentions" was based on Dangerous Liaisons. 

5.Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell.  I love Scarlett.  I think that she is very smart.  She knows she's cute, and is it her fault that she can use her beauty and brains to her advantage?  No.  Guys use what they have all the time to get ahead, and Scarlett had her looks.  If she were a man, no one would say anything but "What a resourceful and charming man!"   Plus, every guy but Rhett bored her silly without giving her a slight challenge.  (Well, and Ashley, but he is so dull I don't even think I should mention him.)  I prefer to think of her as spunky.  She doesn't do things maliciously, but she does do things without others in mind.  She is careless with people and their hearts, but there is innocence to her logic, or lack thereof.  I find it interesting that a woman wrote her and therefore, she is more endearing.  Did I mention that Scarlett (in the book) has three babies with three different guys?  I mean, that's an unspoken rule for girls even today: Don't do that! (unless you're on Maury Povich).  You're allowed two baby daddies, but three and your friends aren't saying anything to your face about it. 

6.Medea, Medea, Euripides. Medea isn't just a bad girl, she is really sick.  She lives in an unfair world where her butthead husband, Jason, replaces her and her children with a younger model.  To get even, she kills their children.  Euripides was, in my opinion, one of the first feminists. He is really remarkable considering he was a man and wrote this play back in I don't know, the year 400 BC?  This play was sprung from his compassion for women and was trying to tell everyone, "Look.  Start treating them fairly or they'll snap!"  This really is one of the most amazing things I have read simply because the Greeks truly did "get" everything and much sooner than anyone else.  Maybe what he was saying is "Deep down there's a crazy bitch in every woman.  Do not scorn them or you will regret it." 

7.Eve, The Bible.  How can Eve not be on here?  Whether you believe she existed or not (I believe she did), this woman is the reason for all of the other women on the list.  Not to mention, Man's Excuse for why the world is so bad.  We rolled in all beautiful with the apple, seduced Adam, and now look at the world.  Thanks for that, Eve.  We'll never live it down.

8.Countess Olenska, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton. The Countess is a girl who likes to have sex in the 20's, she doesn't give a damn what people think of her, and she sleeps with a married man.  Not only does the man sleep with her, he falls in love with her.  She is complicated where his wife, May, is a simple-minded socialite.  Is it just me or do those women always get cheated on? 

9.Emma Bovary, Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert. Emma has affairs to escape a mundane existence.  She is careless, deceitful, and lusts often.  She is aware, completely, of what she is doing and hurts innocent men while searching for her next high.  Flaubert was not kind to Emma in this novel.  Her fate is very sad and karma bites her right where she deserves it.  She is a cautionary tale.  You chase the wrong things, you will die alone and unhappy.

10.Dolores Haze "Lolita", Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.  I hesitate to put this young lady on here because she's a child, but if we are talking strictly text, Nabokov writes her as if she is intentional with her seduction and she is definitely written as a bad girl.  The disturbing thing about this novel, and when I say disturbing I mean I was physically ill at points while reading it, is that it's written in first person and through the eyes of her molester.  It's written to make you feel sorry for the man, a man who is "tortured" by this young girl.  It's pretty hard to read.  However, Lolita has become a term to describe naughty young girls, so here she goes, on the list.
 
 

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