My Favourite Villains

Argh, really not doing very well at this "regularly" thing, am I? Once again, in my defence, I have been hugely busy, this time with final essays and final exams and final drinking. However, all that is now done. As of 10.30am yesterday, I am finished with my studies. Nothing left to do. Hasn't quite sunk in yet (which has nothing to do with many pints yesterday afternoon) but all very exciting.

So. Onto the topic of this post. Villains. I was recently reading this flavorwire post about movie villains which ranks dear old Voldemort as #21 of their 50 Greatest Movie Villains on account of his being 'so evil, people are afraid to say his name'. Admittedly, this fear stems from the fact that if you do say his name the word has a magical trace on it, and he sends a couple of cronies to kill you off. So, all in all, pretty villainous. HOWEVER, Voldy is not my favourite Potter bad guy. Sure he's the Big Bad behind the magical world's annual battle of good versus evil but I actually think that some of J.K. Rowling's other antagonists are more interesting characters. Obviously Bellatrix Lestrange is the first to spring to mind; whilst Voldemort is cold and calculating in his attempts to wipe out the inferior muggles, Bellatrix is really just evil for the sake of it. I think the films play up the relationship between her and Voldemort with her looking to him for validation, whereas in the books I got the impression that she just genuinely enjoyed her murderous lifestyle and by aligning herself with the greatest dark wizard to have ever lived, she's got an outlet for it. There's also Umbridge. Although ostensibly one of the Goodies, Dolores Umbridge is just so delightfully vile with her kittens and her frills and her ridiculous adherence to The Rules. Harry's detention of writing lines with her special quill, whilst all the pink, frilly kittens watch on is an incredible abuse of power and very creepy to boot.

Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy

But I think my favourite villain throughout the series, and certainly the one with the most interesting development, is Lucius Malfoy. In Chamber of Secrets, Lucius is an extremely unpleasant blend of malevolent and powerful, planting Tom Riddle's diary on Ginny Weasley before term starts in an attempt to have the chamber of secrets reopened, thus simultaneously discrediting both Dumbledore and Arthur Weasley in the eyes of the ministry. [SPOILER] This isn't exactly how it works out. Over the course of the final three books, we see Lucius change from one of the sneeriest, most unpleasant men in fiction to a dishevelled, humiliated shell pleading with Voldemort to end the battle so that he can find his son. His calm, icy exterior when he is associated with those in power, either the Minister for Magic or Voldemort, masks cowardice when alone and ultimately, his human concern for the safety of his family separates him from the other major villains on the dark side. This also, I think, makes him one of the most nuanced characters in the canon.

All this chatter of Potter villains got me to thinking (how very Carrie Bradshaw) of other fictional villains that I loved, managing to narrow it down to a top three, discounting the aforementioned (Lucius would probably make it in at number three). Honorable mentions go to Steerpike in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books - more of a Machiavellian anti-hero than a villain strictly-speaking, but he does burn down a library and cause the death, whether directly or not, of several members of the Groan family so he's not doing so badly in the villain stakes - and du Maurier's Mrs Danvers - her intent to break up Max de Winter's second marriage seemingly knows no bounds, covering all manner of nasty behaviour, culminating in the burning down of their beloved home.

 3. Mrs Coulter in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials: Marisa Coulter is cruel, ruthless, power-hungry and manipulative - all hallmarks of an excellent villain. Plus there's the whole intercision thing (cutting children from their daemons) which is pretty grim. However, as with Lucius Malfoy, the character isn't unrelentingly evil, and she is torn between her maternal instincts towards Lyra and acting for her own gain, making for a twisty-turny relationship between the reader and Mrs Coulter; I never truly felt able to trust her, but she did keep surprising me.

'Her eyes were big black buttons'

2. The Other Mother in Coraline by Neil Gaiman: Coraline is Gaiman's story of a girl who, feeling ignored by own parents, finds a doting Other Mother and Other Father in a parallel of her house, and initially she is pleased by parents who will pay her attention. Obviously this goes really well. It also features one of the truly creepiest passages of any book I have ever read. I don't want to deprive anyone the pleasure of reading it without knowing what happens so no spoilers here, but I get chills just thinking about it. (An aside: I actually read somewhere that Gaiman initially omitted this chapter from the book, believing it to be too creepy even by his standards, but was encouraged to reinsert it by his editor. And I'm glad he was.) The Other Mother herself is very similar to Coraline's actual mother but with buttons for eyes and long twitchy fingers, and she collects children but gets bored easily and leaves them locked behind a magic mirror. Lovely.


Which leads me to...

Quentin Blake's Grand High Witch. Still terrifying.

1. The Grand High Witch in Roald Dahl's The Witches: 'The most evil and appalling woman in the world'. I can't even articulate how terrifying I found the Grand High Witch as a child. My sister and I had story tapes of James and the Giant Peach (which we would sometimes listen to whilst we were falling asleep) and The Witches (which we would most definitely not listen to whilst we were falling asleep), and even approximately fifteen years later, I can still remember the music on The Witches and it still makes me shiver. The witches are all physically repulsive: no toes, no hair, clawed hands but the Grand High Witch is even more so, removing a mask to reveal a rotten face. Anjelica Huston played the GHW in the film brilliantly and arguably the film's version is even more grotesque, but it's obviously Quentin Blake's drawings of her that have really stuck in my mind. Dahl did villains very well, and I really think that the Grand High Witch is his pinnacle.




So who are your favourite villains from the fictional world?

p.s. I'll try and not mention Harry Potter or Roald Dahl in my next post.

Musing on names in translation

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry! Only post two and I've already broken my own rule. In my defence, I've been hugely busy and allowing myself to only procrastinate the really important things with the marginally less important things. Am thankful that I didn't offer my first-born to the blogging gods should I break the rules, otherwise we could end up with a tricky Rumpelstiltskin situation down the line and if I remember my Brothers Grimm correctly, that did not end well. Although that was mostly for Rumpelstiltskin himself...

ANYWAY.

Matilda and Harry Potter

During a recent work experience placement with a children's publisher, I received very beautiful French editions of two of my favourite children's books: Matilda by Roald Dahl and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling. I have wonderful memories of reading Matilda as a child, although I hadn't read it for many years, and I am a fully paid-up member of Potterheads Anonymous so I was delighted when a tidy-up in the publicity corner unearthed these two books, and since no-one else nearby at the time spoke French I didn't have to fight anyone for them. They are part of a series called Bibliothèque published by Gallimard Jeunesse last year to celebrate their 40th anniversary. The series aims to build up a library of classic and contemporary literature, both original works in French as well as works in translation, accessible to children and teens, and features a range of other titles such as The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea and Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. A really ecclectic mix. 

Matilda cover image

From an aesthetic point of view these books are beautiful. They have a "soft-touch" dust jacket, and lovely heavy pages, whilst the gorgeous cover illustrations by someone called Antonin Faure are shiny and lightly embossed. As someone who particularly loves illustration, and can't imagine Roald Dahl's words without Quentin Blake's pictures, I'm pleased to note that the books retain their original illustrations internally, and Faure has incorporated Blake's classic image of Matilda reading sitting on a pile of books into the cover image too. 

 

The thing that I found particularly interesting, and really the point of this post, was the way certain names and words have been translated. In Matilda, the Wormwood family have become the 'Verdebois', Miss Trunchbull is 'Mlle Legourdin' whilst Miss Honey is rather jarringly 'Mlle Candy'. I understand the first two changes; as French-sounding words they flow better, especially when read aloud (important in children's books) and, whilst not literal translations of their English counterparts, they convey similar meanings: 'bois' meaning wood, and 'le gourdin' something like the club or bludgeon. However, I just can't get on board with Mlle Candy. It irked everytime I came across it when reading, and although perhaps candy is more familiar an English word than honey to French children, I just can't understand why, having gone to the trouble to give others very French names, the powers-that-be stuck with Mlle Candy.Why not even Mlle Miel? 

Harry Potter cover image

There are similar examples in Harry Potter too. The translation of the title to 'Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers' (Harry Potter at the School of Wizards) initially bothered me, but then I remembered that the Americans also altered the title, and they weren't even translating it into a different language! Within the story, since many of Rowling's words and names have been made up, there's quite a difference. For example Hogwarts becomes Poudlard, the four houses are Gryffondor (Gryffindor), Poufsouffle (Hufflepuff), Serdaigle (Ravenclaw) and Serpentard (Slytherin). Three of these are fairly self-evident but I can't explain the name for Ravenclaw. Claw in French is 'griffe' so perhaps it was decided that going with literal translation would have been too close to Gryffindor? 

In terms of the characters themselves, most of the main ones in the first book all retain their English names: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, McGonagall etc. Except Snape. Whose name is Severus Rogue. Severus. Rogue. WHAT? Now, I am a particularly big fan of Snape. I loved his character development; like Dumbledore, I always trusted that he was ultimately good and '"After all this time?" "Always"' will never fail to bring tears to my eyes. And I just don't think this name fits. Without taking into consideration that the alliteration of Severus Snape is something that I'm sure was carefully thought out by Rowling, the surname Rogue seems to do Snape a disservice. The closest translation in English to the French word Rogue is 'arrogant', and whilst Snape is depicted as many things (cold, bitter, sarcastic...) I don't think he's really arrogant. 

However, despite some issues with the translation of names, these books remain two of my favourites, and in the same way that it is nice to break up some Serious Grown-Up Reading (I do do some, I promise) with a bit of YA fiction, or a picture book, it has been nice to break up reading for my French 21st Century novel course with two stories that I know and love. Now I'm just seeing how long I can hold out before buying more in the series, because I think they'd look especially pretty all together on my bookshelf... 


p.s. apologies for terrible quality of these photographs. They really do not do the loveliness of these books justice...