Ivan's Devil in The Brothers Karamazov says that he is tummler, a comedian, and a vaudevillian. Life without him would be a thudding bore, a world of insufferably good people, doing good things, and interminably uninteresting.
Tolstoy famously wrote, 'All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’; and with that he wrote about Anna Karenina and her husband, Count Vronsky, Prince Oblansky, Princess Scherbatsky and their troubled, fascinating families.
Literature is filled with villains, villainesses, cads, crooks, shysters, adulterers, and con men. The most interesting characters in Shakespeare are Richard III, Iago, Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Dionyza, Lady Macbeth, and Tamora who play out ambition jealousy, spite, she-bear defensiveness, territorialism, and downright greed in a mayhem of cruelty, exile, and murder.
Literature is life, after all. Shakespeare may have invented Richard III but he didn't invent the archetype, a character of indomitable will without a shred of moral restraint. Dionyza in her plot to kill Marina, the beautiful, innocent daughter of Pericles only because she was a sexual competitor to her own plain, uninteresting daughter, may have been an exaggeratedly protective mother, but few readers have not met women of such cold ambition.
Iago drove Othello to murder and ruins him, his reputation, and his family simply because he could - an evil man without a shred of human feeling; but is he unique? Far from it.
And so it is with no surprise that someone like Amanda Barkley existed, a woman with seemingly no positive redeeming features, but a fascinating woman nonetheless. She was born nasty. Her parents couldn't believe that they had created such a creature - a little girl without an ounce of compassion for others, not a whit of tolerance or accommodation, not one bit of tenderness or affection.
She was a child somehow born so far outside the norm that she could horrify and fascinate at the seme time. The good people of New Brighton had never seen or known anyone like her. Whenever she stepped onto the playground, the other children scattered and left her standing alone. She was a pariah from her first day in pre-school. There was something innately fiendish about her, pigtails and pinafore and all, and even the teachers kept their distance.
Even the most religious among the community began to have doubts about God - how and why would he have created a creature like this with not an iota of his divinity, with more in common with Beelzebub than Jesus, a girl who came out of the womb bad. They blessed themselves, said special prayers, did an extra rosary for the girl and for all those around her.
Amanda Barkley grew up quickly, and as a young adolescent was a stunning beauty, and these same devout Catholics wondered at God's irony creating a devil in such a beautiful disguise. Worse, it was the Devil's own work, managing to fashion just the right demon for the times, an irresistible woman, as outwardly appealing and good as Eve, but a being with no soul.
Not only was Amanda beautiful, but she was smart - so smart that she was doodling abstract mathematical equations before she left elementary school, and enrolled in the university's graduate programs while still in high school. This too was conceived as the Devil's work, for now this young woman had her pick, and could sow the seeds of evil at will.
Of course these febrile-minded burghers were only expressing their own doubts about Creation and their salvation. Except for being a bitch - a virago, succubus, harridan, and vixen - she was simply a Darwinian configuration with some odd bits. Her horridness was really no different than slanty eyes, a genetic variation that promised no evolutionary advantage but somehow showed up and persisted.
It was her stunning beauty, genius, and growing will to apply both to her advantage which gave her that Darwinian push, and the fact that she was an abhorrent personality was irrelevant.
Where, one might ask, would society find a place for such a remarkable person? On the one hand because of those odd bits, no one wanted to be within a mile of her, but because of that core of genius and undeniably ideal beauty they still wanted her. A classic Kurt Lewin approach-avoidance psychological paradigm played out at the level of society at large.
There is nothing to say that a virago cannot put on an act especially when one is as intelligent as Amanda. She was aware of her 'special' character - a kind of personalized misanthropy which did not necessarily include all humanity, just most - and knew that because it was not irreducible the rough edges could be honed to her advantage. All by way of saying that she could fool most of the people most of the time, and politics was the perfect place for her talents.
In fact nothing could be more suitable. A beautiful, intelligent woman without a scrap of moral limitations, in an arena of intellectual rubes, sexually credulous men, and scratchy women. It was her big top, her three ring circus, her Roncesvalles.
Her biggest talent was to harness her brutally indifferent will and let enough of it out to intimidate without rebellion. She had animal-like pheromones which other women could sense and instinctively gave way. Men approached her with confidence but retreated. That, plus an understanding of democracy and how representative government worked, enabled her to make her way effortless through the ranks.
Starting at state level, the darling of a Congressman who knew talent and ambition when he saw it and looked forward to associating with a woman with her brains and uncompromising political philosophy, she became known; and with his entree to Washington was well on her way.
The Congressman and she were two of a kind - Darwin assured that in the evolution of the species there was more than one aberration at a time - and were, in their deep-seated misanthropy and Nietzschean amorality, kindred spirits. What that sexual relationship was like, one could only guess. Since both had the same unquenchable spirit of Iago, Goneril, Regan, Lady Macbeth, and Richard III, sexual conjugation must have been something to behold. They were Washington's power couple, but unlike others who only pretended, they used their colleagues and the system to their unique advantage.
They were invited to Georgetown soirees and after-hours parties in Spring Valley and Palm Springs, but with a certain reserve. Most of their associates never knew quite what to make of them and, like most people in their lives, kept their distance. Amanda used this temerity to her advantage - weak, timorous adversaries were easy to outclass and outmaneuver - and before long she and the Congressman parted ways. Friends to the last, co-conspirators in the great political charade, but lovers no more.
It was better that way, Amanda considered. As much as she felt close to the Congressman, he was no match for her. Someone of her particular breeding and nature needed free running. The prize would never be worth it if shared.
Did age soften Amanda Barkley? Did she lose some of that intimidating will? Did she find reserves of kindness and consideration she never knew she had?
Absolutely not. When she left Washington to make her fortune in business, she was even more demanding, terrifying, and nasty; and by the time she was ready to retire, she had not lost one scintilla of that peculiar dynamism which made her the stunning, unbelievable character she was.
The moral of the story? At the simplest level, it takes all kinds; but at a more profound one, Nature gifts us with unusual people once in a blue moon, and most of them are like Amanda - soulless viragos of unmatched brilliance, ability, and ambition. We can only stand back and admire them.
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