I dunno, maybe this defence / rant isn't necessary on any level but having just finished watching 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' (the non-sequel to 'The Haunting of Hill House') on Netflix with my elder beastie I feel like viewers will probably see the character Peter Quint as a villain... and imho that's a tad unfair.
WARNING: THIS WILL NOT BE A SPOILER FREE ZONE
First up is the inevitable context argument. In 1980s Britain domestic violence was barely acknowledged. A man could LEGALLY rape his wife (that was true until Regina v. R (1991)) and date rape wasn't taken seriously either. Workplace sexism and sexual harassment was normalised. Sure, Peter Quint is a bit of a problematic git by modern standards but he's hardly even a blip for his era.
I'm still not even 100% sure if he'd stolen all the money he was accused of - Henry Wingrave was so far out of his gourd who's to say he didn't lose the funds or give Quint the necessary permissions?!
See also: https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a34348004/haunting-of-bly-manor-oliver-jackson-cohen-interview/
Instead I would argue that Viola Willoughby is the absolute villain of the piece. Not to deny she had a rough go of it but she was a damned nasty piece of work well before she morphed into the monster of the piece:
- Viola sweeps Arthur, the man her sister Perdita is interested in, off his feet; Perdita is then dependent on her brother-in-law and has no other marriage prospects.
- Viola has a child, Isabel, who supplants Perdita in her affections.
- Viola gets sick with (presumably) tuberculosis. She does not respect the enforced separation from her daughter - she's so selfish that she literally doesn't care if Isabel catches her disease.
- Perdita nurses her faithfully but Viola lashes out viciously - fuelled by anger, jealousy, and resentment. Perdita begs Viola to accept her fate, even if only so Isabel may have better memories of her mother. Viola doesn't care.
- Perdita, having borne all these things with good grace, eventually suffocates Viola - she tries to think of it as a mercy but (according to the narrator) she has 'had enough'. Like that isn't valid. Enough of Viola's suffering (having now far outlived all expectations) and enough of her cruelty. Everyone has a limit and that was Perdita's.
This article posits that Viola isn't a real villain but just as trapped as the other spirits:
https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a34225149/haunting-of-bly-manor-lady-in-the-lake/
I disagree. She may not have trapped herself intentionally and she couldn't have foreseen the consequences her refusal to accept her fate would have but there's no denying she caused the whole damn mess through sheer bloody-mindedness! If she had been a kinder person, if she had put her daughter's needs first, if she had considered her sister AT ALL, none of it would have happened.
But this is supposed to be a rant in defence of Peter Quint, right? So let's bring it back to him.
The really unconscionable thing Quint does is kill his lover, Rebecca 'Bex' Jessel. But being me I have a counterpoint to that too.
Okay, I lied about being back to Quint. ANOTHER tangent: when Hannah Grose is coming to terms with the fact she's dead she's working through her emotions by projecting the object of her affections - Owen Sharma - so when he asks her to warn him of the danger it's her own mind telling her to save the man she loves.
So we judge Peter Quint for taking the life of his lover instead of saving her. But Hannah and Peter being very different people doesn't make Quint an inherently bad guy, just not as good as Hannah. People are varied, not just good and bad. As it is, when the danger is pressing upon them Hannah tells Owen only "they need you at the lake" sending him straight into harm's way with no warning of what lay ahead!
The fact Peter reveals himself as a ghost to Bex should warn her - but somehow it doesn't. Her own reaction is, in my humble opinion, 'off': she should surely want to discover Quint's body and have his name cleared when everyone believes him an absconding thief? Instead she falls in with his plans to find a way for them to stay together forever... for a wannabe barrister she's exceptionally slow on the uptake of what that must inevitably entail. Nor does she seem to be over-burdened with guilt for the 'help' they demand of Miles and Flora, the children she was responsible for.
Yeah, Peter's not a 'good' guy but then Bex wasn't so sweet and innocent... she was totally using the kids as a way to get to Henry Wingrave, using the kids to see Peter - even AFTER he killed her. And lets not forget that she STILL didn't tell him 'no' when she pretended to go along with possessing Flora permanently: Bex was complicit in Peter's attempt to eradicate Miles even as she tried to 'save' Flora.
So let's address THAT. Peter loves Bex. Hannah loves Owen. Hannah wants Owen SAVED. Peter wants Bex dead? Is it really so simple or cruel? I'm not so sure. Peter wanted to be WITH Bex and the only way he could see that happening was if she died too. It's almost the exact same thing as Viola trying to fetch Isabel every night in her madness... and I wonder if that's where he got it from? He's not so far gone as Viola but her loss, her madness infects all the spirits she traps at Bly. The other ghosts aren't hell-bent on dragging their loved ones off to a watery grave because (so it seems) none of them was possessed by that destructive, possessive kind of love in life. Or at least not with the object of that 'affection' within the boundaries.
Perhaps if Perdita's ghost had risen at her death (rather than waiting for Viola's chest to rot down in the lake) she'd have harmed Arthur or Isabel... but I think not. Life had not been kind to Perdita but she was fundamentally an unselfish person: she had stood back to allow Arthur to be happy with Viola; even before her post-death insanity Viola wouldn't step back even for the sake of Isabel's life.
As Viola kept selfishly trying to bring Isabel to her so too did Peter try to keep Bex with him. Perhaps Viola is excused because she was too far gone to realise what she was doing? But I'm still of the mind that he thought Bex realised what the goal was - he didn't tell her the plan and tucked her away in a memory to cause her less fear and suffering, not as a deliberate deception.
But my theory is that, given time, Hannah might have tried to induce Owen - by whatever means she could - to stay at Bly with her. Whether that would be from a normal human fear of loneliness or the warped influence of Viola who could tell? Maybe Hannah loved Owen enough to let him go... but as it turned out he didn't let her go - he took her memory with him. If he'd had the chance I fear he'd have jumped at the chance to stay with her at Bly forever.
As you may know I have been alone just this side of forever. I refer to finding my fictional future spouse as finding a willing victim. Y'all think I'd let a little thing like death get in my way if I finally met the right someone?! "Till death us do part" is kinda short term... So yeah, I'm not gonna condemn Peter Quint for 'keeping' Bex, especially if he thought she was willing.
He was afraid. Lonely, afraid, and desperate. The memory he kept slipping back to, unlike Bex and Hannah's happy moments, was being manipulated by his abusive mother. A damaged man, human enough to make some terrible mistakes, and yet still capable of love.
Did Peter Quint redeem himself? It's a tough one. I believed his apology to Miles was heartfelt but it is it enough to say "I'm sorry I tried to kill you kid"? I'm not sure. But hey, Miles lived and completely forgot his childhood trauma. What kind of 'peace' Quint went to when Viola's spell was broken is, like everything about the hereafter, unknowable.
Did Rebecca Jessel redeem herself? Also kind of tough. She was willing to sacrifice Miles to save Flora. She was willing to suffer Flora's drowning so the child didn't have to. It's not because she's a woman that I find her more problematic than Quint - Quint made a decision to permanently possess the children, a terrible thing to do indeed... but an open and 'honest' decision. Bex, for a grown and supposedly highly educated woman, shows herself to be horribly suggestible at best. It's like she's supposed to be the victim of a manipulative boyfriend and sure, even smart women do stupid shit for men but I'm not buying it.
If she'd CHOSEN to hurt those kids for her own ends I'd understand it more than this... stupidity. I've often said that if I kill someone I want it to be because I MEANT TO. Killing someone by accident or ignorance or neglect or stupidity is, to me somehow worse than deliberate murder because you just didn't care if someone got hurt. If someone kills me I want it to be because they wanted me dead, not because I was convenient, or there.
Viola definitely didn't redeem herself and I'm still baffled by the conclusion... why did she bide her time within Dani? Why did she re-assert herself after such a long time? Is it supposed to be a metaphor for things like HIV that once contracted will get you in the end???
Although Perdita killed Viola she's the one I feel for. She bore her misfortunes with grace and suffered a great deal, getting a raw deal from Arthur, Isabel and Viola. I also felt her ghost was of little significance in the haunting. Rather a sad afterlife.
