A couple of years ago, I had a conversation that has stuck with me. I was at an Austen-based literary event where we were discussing Lady Susan. The conversation, at least to me, took an odd spin when one person suggested she saw Lady Susan as a heroine and was rooting for her throughout the story.

I am apt to let people have their opinions and not debate with them. But this one struck me hard. To me, the tale is all about the wreckage Lady Susan leaves in her wake. The real harm she caused was something I could not unsee. “It’s nice to see the bad girl win” did not make for a compelling argument.

The discussion has remained uncomfortable in my mind for a while now. So I fell down the rabbit hole and dug into the recent popularity of villain stories and why they make me so uneasy.

When the Villain was Obvious.

It used to be common for stories to have an identifiable villain. The wicked stepmother, the evil queen, the scheming nobleman, the corrupt businessman, the power-hungry ruler all served a simple purpose. They created obstacles for the hero to overcome. The story’s focus remained on the people harmed by their actions.

Villain stories fascinate modern audiences, though. We want to know what happened before the story began in order to understand the childhood wounds, betrayals, disappointments, and traumas that transformed ordinary people into antagonists. Films such as Joker, Maleficent, Cruella, and Wicked have built entire narratives around reexamining familiar villains from a different perspective.

While this has resulted in some interesting stories, it also raises an uncomfortable question: What happens when understanding a villain overshadows the experiences of those they hurt?

The Rise of the Villain Origin Story

Earlier narratives often treated evil as a fixed character trait. Modern storytelling asks how harmful behavior develops. Writers explore trauma, loneliness, social rejection, family dysfunction, and systemic injustice in their search for origins.

Advocates of this approach argue that such stories encourage empathy, presenting villains as damaged human beings. Villain-origin films help audiences understand mental health struggles and recognize how isolation, discrimination, and trauma can influence behavior (Berkeley High Jacket 2021). This approach can foster empathy and healing interventions.

Yet understanding is not the same thing as excusing. That distinction matters.

Why Survivors Often See These Stories Differently

For abuse survivors, villain stories can create mixed emotions. Contrary to popular assumption, survivors often excel at understanding villains.

Many spent years trying to understand the person who hurt them. They learned what triggered anger. They learned family histories. They learned childhood wounds. They learned the explanations offered for cruel or manipulative behavior. In many situations, understanding becomes a survival skill.

As a result, survivors may approach villain stories differently than audiences who have never experienced those dynamics. While other viewers see a fascinating psychological portrait, survivors sometimes recognize a familiar pattern. The harmful person’s pain receives center stage. The victim fades into the background amidst the explanation for the abusive behavior.

The problem is not understanding the villain. The problem is forgetting everyone else.

Trauma Is Not Destiny

Lamothe, of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, examines how popular media frequently uses trauma as the explanation for villainous behavior. While acknowledging that trauma can influence development, she warns against presenting trauma as a direct path to becoming dangerous or abusive (Lamothe 2024).

This distinction is crucial. Most trauma survivors do not become villains. Most people who experience abuse do not become abusers. Most children who grow up in difficult circumstances do not spend their adult lives harming others.

Trauma may increase risk factors, but it does not eliminate choice, responsibility, or moral agency. For many survivors, this point is at the heart of their discomfort with certain villain narratives.

When stories suggest that suffering inevitably produces harmful behavior, they erase the countless survivors who endured hardship and chose a different path.

Such narratives become even more troubling when they imply that trauma somehow grants permission for cruelty.

The Blurry Line Between Villains and Victims

A recent article in The Science Survey argues that modern storytelling increasingly recognizes that people cannot always be divided neatly into heroes and villains. Individuals may experience genuine harm while causing harm to others (The Science Survey 2025).

This observation is important because it helps explain why villain stories resonate with modern audiences. Most adults discover that life is morally messy. Recognizing these complexities creates richer stories.

However, complexity works only when all truths remain visible at the same time. A person can be both a victim and a villain. The moment we focus on one role and ignore the other, complexity disappears.

Jane Austen’s Lady Susan: Understanding Without Excusing

Villain stories generate controversy when they struggle to distinguish empathy from absolution. Empathy means understanding someone’s experience. Absolution means removing responsibility.

Understanding a villain’s pain does not transform them into a hero. Readers can empathize with a character’s suffering while still recognizing that their actions remain harmful. Some suggest that ability is a hallmark of mature moral reasoning.

Jane Austen demonstrated this principle in Lady Susan. Charming, intelligent, witty, and socially skilled, Lady Susan Vernon possesses many traits normally associated with protagonists.

Readers spend much of the novella inside her perspective, understanding her frustrations, ambitions, and calculations. Austen allows us to see how Lady Susan views the world. Yet Austen never asks readers to excuse Lady Susan.

The character faces real social limitations. As a widow with restricted economic options, she operates within a society that limits female independence. Readers can understand why she relies on charm, influence, and strategic thinking.

But Austen never uses those circumstances to erase responsibility for Lady Susan’s harmful actions. Lady Susan lies, manipulates, and exploits relationships. Most notably, she attempts to control her vulnerable daughter, Frederica.

Austen ensures that Frederica remains visible throughout the story. Readers see the emotional consequences of Lady Susan’s actions. The daughter’s fears, hopes, and suffering matter independent of her mother’s narrative. Lady Susan is humanized but never sanitized or justified.

Thanos, the Phantom, and the Slippery Slope from Explanation to Justification

Modern popular culture provides some useful examples of how stories can either maintain or blur the line between explanation and justification.

Consider Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

The films devote considerable time to explaining his motivations. Thanos witnessed the collapse of his homeworld and became convinced that unchecked population growth would destroy entire civilizations. In his mind, eliminating half of all life is not cruelty but sacrifice. He views himself as a savior willing to bear a burden others cannot.

The audience understands his reasoning. Yet the films never suggest that his actions are morally acceptable. Every step of the story reminds viewers of the devastation he causes. Families are destroyed. Friends disappear. Entire worlds suffer. The heroes challenge not only his methods but the assumptions underlying his philosophy. This is explanation without justification.

The Phantom of the Opera presents a more complicated case.

Gaston Leroux’s original novel introduces a tragic figure. The Phantom has been rejected because of his appearance, isolated from society, and denied normal human relationships. His loneliness evokes sympathy almost immediately. Understanding his suffering enriches the story.

The difficulty emerges in some later adaptations and audience interpretations, which emphasize his tragedy while minimizing the harm he causes. The Phantom stalks Christine, manipulates her, isolates her from others, kidnaps her, and uses violence to achieve his goals. Yet many modern discussions focus on whether he deserves Christine’s love rather than on the consequences of his behavior.

Instead of asking, “How did this damaged man become dangerous?” audiences wonder, “Doesn’t his suffering excuse what he does?” That is where explanation slides toward justification.

For abuse survivors, this distinction can feel significant. Many have encountered real people whose tragic histories were used to excuse controlling, manipulative, or harmful behavior. They understand that pain can explain destructive actions. What they resist is the suggestion that pain makes those actions acceptable.

This is where Jane Austen’s Lady Susan does so well. Like the Phantom, Lady Susan possesses qualities that invite reader fascination. Like Thanos, she has motivations that make sense within her worldview. Austen allows readers to understand her, yet never permits sympathy to erase accountability.

Most importantly, she never allows readers to forget Frederica, the daughter who suffers from Lady Susan’s manipulation.

Who Gets Narrative Attention?

Many modern villain stories devote enormous energy to explaining the antagonist’s suffering. Yet comparatively little attention is paid to the people harmed by the villain’s choices. This imbalance stands out to abuse survivors.

Many have spent years being asked to understand the person who hurt them. Far fewer people asked about their own experiences and recovery.

None of this means storytellers should abandon nuanced villains. But it is essential that they remember explanation and justification are different things. Whose pain receives narrative attention?

Real complexity means holding multiple truths at once. A person can be wounded and dangerous. Sympathetic and harmful. Victim and victimizer.

Jane Austen understood this balance long before modern psychology gave us the vocabulary to describe it. In Lady Susan, she offered readers a character who is captivating, intelligent, and flawed. We understand her.

But Austen never allows us to forget Frederica. And it seems prudent to learn from her example; victims should not be a footnote in a villain’s story.

References

Balanced Mind of NY. 2024. “The Therapeutic Value of the Dark Empath.” Balanced Mind of NY. https://balancedmindofny.com/blog/the-therapeutic-value-of-dark-empath/

Berkeley High Jacket. 2021. “Villain Origin Films Encourage Empathy.” Berkeley High Jacket, May 17, 2021. https://berkeleyhighjacket.com/2021/entertainment/villain-origin-films-encourage-empathy

Brassard, Geneviève. 2005. “The Sacred Impulse of Maternal Devotion: Austen’s Critique of Domesticity and Motherhood in Lady Susan.” Women’s Studies 34 (1): 27–48. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00497870590903487

Dryden, Linda. 2005. “The Gothic and the Masked Villain: Reading The Phantom of the Opera.” In The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles: Stevenson, Wilde and Wells. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230505983

Lamothe, Josianne. 2024. “Media Matters: Can We Talk About How Villains Are Made? Trauma and Origin Stories in Popular Media.” International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. https://istss.org/media-matters-can-we-talk-about-how-villains-are-made-trauma-and-origin-stories-in-popular-media-josianne-lamothe-msw-phd/

Leroux, Gaston. 1910. The Phantom of the Opera. Paris: Pierre Lafitte. English translation available through Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/175

McClelland, Richard Terence. 2018. “Shamelessness in Jane Austen: The Case of Lady Susan.” Journal of Mind and Behavior 39 (3): 229–250. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329873368_Shamelessness_in_Jane_Austen_The_case_of_Lady_Susan

Powrie, Phil, and Robynn Stilwell, eds. 2006. Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.  

Syarifah, Rahmah Fithriani, and Pardi. 2025. “Protagonist Agency in Epistolary Fiction: Lady Susan by Jane Austen.” Wanastra: Jurnal Bahasa dan Sastra 18 (1). https://jurnal.bsi.ac.id/index.php/wanastra/article/view/12184

The Science Survey. 2025. “The Blurry Line Between Villains and Victims.” February 12, 2025. https://thesciencesurvey.com/arts-entertainment/2025/02/12/the-blurry-line-between-villains-and-victims/

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