Darling, I know! **
Today’s word has a wain’s worth of class attitude: villain.
It seems logical to think that villain would share some sort of etymological root with vile and vilify – all the nasty things in one bucket, what ho?
But English is a language which defies logic. No, it snatches logic down from the tree and squeezes the life out of it, adding logic juice as a spicy flavouring to its hot-pot melange of the half dozen other languages it has smashed together. Tasty!
So vile and vilify come to English from French and originally from the Latin vilis meaning base or worthless. And villain comes via the same route, but not from vilis. Villain comes from villa, as in a Roman’s country house. Someone attached to – working at – the farmhouse or villa was a villanus.
Wait. We’re getting there. It makes as much sense as insulting someone by saying they are churlish or a boor.
By the time the Norman’s conquered their way across the Channel in 1066 villanus had become villein – meaning a low sort of peasant. In the feudal world even peasants had hierarchies and the villein/villain was above a serf, but below a thane. Clear as muck? Excellent!
Soon there were villains all over England – raking muck, sowing and reaping, wassailing and morris dancing. Of course it wasn’t all filth and giggles. They had plague and pestilence to keep things real.
But the point is that villains were peasants and they weren’t too clean or too fussy about what they found entertaining. It didn’t take long before the word villain meant not only a peasant but anyone who was low-born, rude, coarse, base and with no manners or taste.
A yokel, a hick, a hayseed.
And, as has ever been the way, it’s a short skip from low manners to low morals. You know: you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas. As well as a general insult meaning common as the muck they raked, villain started to mean an immoral, criminal and dangerous person. A knave and a rascal.
Etymologically speaking:
- knave = male servant (Old English/Germanic),
- rascal = rabble/people of the lowest class (Old French),
- churl = peasant(Old English/Germanic),
- boor = peasant (from the Latin for cow).
I’m seeing a pattern emerging here.
By early in the 19th century, villain had been attached to the idea of a character in a book or play whose evil actions drove the plot forward. From there it became a more general word for a wicked or malevolent person, and by the 20th century it had also acquired the gloss of being a criminal mastermind.
A defamatory transformation for those poor peasants, but what’s the take-home message for the writers in the room?
Well, you’re no doubt aware that your villain/antagonist shouldn’t be a moustache-twirling cardboard cut-out, who is evil for the sake of being evil and has no reason for stopping the hero/protagonist from achieving their goals other than that someone has to or, hello, no plot.
Villains need depth and motivation and they need to believe in their reasons for doing the evil things they do.
The best villains see themselves as heroes.
Also… check your assumptions.
Are your villains perpetuating class, race or gender stereotypes? Are you thoughtlessly writing white hat/black hat characters. That is, are all your good guys good-looking? Or slim? Or polite, educated, well-groomed, gainfully employed, whatever other virtue you prize, while the villains are ugly, physically deformed, thuggish, fat***, stupid, etc, etc.
You can do better than that. Great antagonists are often a shadow mirror reflecting back the opposite of the hero – what the hero could be if they chose the dark side. But you don’t have to take an either/or approach to every aspect of these characters.
And you really shouldn’t leap in and assume the antagonist is a peasant because all villains are, aren’t they? Make conscious choices about your antagonists and your protagonists – don’t just have default settings.
The etymology of the word villain is a lesson in class prejudice – it permeates our language without us even realising it.
Words are your tools, writers – know what they mean and what they imply and use them with intent.
*It’s Wednesday word time again. This could get to be a thing.
** I know – that’s not a photo of villains or peasants! They’re Skaven and they’re revolting.
***Someone I know has stopped reading a best-selling thriller author because anytime a character is introduced and described as fat it’s a giveaway that they’re the bad guy. Kind of kills the thrill.