| The Bad Seed | |
| Author: | William March |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Psychological horror |
| Publisher: | Rinehart & Company |
| Release Date: | April 8, 1954 |
| Media Type: | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages: | 247 pp (reprint edition) |
| Isbn: | 978-0-06-079548-1 |
| Isbn Note: | (reprint edition) |
| Oclc: | 61157841 |
| Preceded By: | October Island (1952) |
| Followed By: | A William March Omnibus (1956) |
The Bad Seed is a 1954 horror novel by American writer William March, the last of his major works published before his death.
Nominated for the 1955 National Book Award for Fiction, The Bad Seed tells the story of a mother's realization that her young daughter is a murderer. Its enormous critical and commercial success was largely realized after March's death only one month after publication.
In 1954, the novel was adapted into a successful and long-running Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson and into an Academy Award-nominated film directed by Mervyn LeRoy in 1956.
8-year-old Rhoda Penmark is the only child of Christine and Kenneth Penmark. While she is cherished by the adults in her life for her sweet and intelligent nature, her classmates at Fern Grammar School avoid her, sensing something “isn’t quite right” about her.
After her husband leaves on a business trip, Christine notices Rhoda’s callous attitude regarding the sudden death of her classmate, Claude Daigle — while the boy’s death was deemed accidental, he had unexplainable crescent-shaped marks imprinted on his face. Christine learns that, before his death, Rhoda quarreled with the boy over a medal award for perfect penmanship that he won, but which Rhoda believed she deserved.
Rhoda’s chilling indifference to the boy’s death causes Christine to reevaluate troubling incidents from the past, such as the mysterious deaths of her pet dog and Rhoda’s elderly babysitter. Disturbed by the idea that her daughter might be the one behind all these tragedies, Christine begins investigating and discovers she was actually adopted by her own parents: her birth mother, Bessie Denker, was a notorious serial killer who died in the electric chair. As her mental state deteriorates, Christine begins writing letters to her husband discussing Rhoda, blaming herself for passing the “bad seed” gene to their daughter. She never mails the letters out of fear someone will read them and call the authorities.
The only other adult aware of Rhoda’s true nature is Leroy Jessup, the maintenance man who works and lives at the Penmarks’ apartment complex, who relentlessly teases the girl regarding Claude’s death. She’s indifferent to his teasing until Leroy insinuates Rhoda must have used her cleated shoes to beat Claude, explaining the crescent-shaped marks left on the boy's face. Afraid he will expose her, she waits until Leroy is asleep before lightning his mattress ablaze and locking him inside his shed; a horrified Christine witnesses the murder from afar.
Christine confronts Rhoda, who confesses to the murders while expressing no remorse. Not wanting her daughter to suffer the same fate as Denker, Christine secretly gives Rhoda an overdose of sleeping pills; after destroying the unsent letters, Christine shoots herself in the head. The gunshot is heard by a neighbor, who breaks into the apartment and saves Rhoda. Christine dies in the hospital while a heartbroken Kenneth returns home. With all evidence of her actions destroyed, Rhoda is free to kill again.
Rhoda is portrayed as a high-functioning sociopath, although the term was not widely used at the time the book was written. She has no conscience, and will not hesitate to harm or kill whoever stands in her way at achieving her goal. She sees murder as something that is necessary if she believes her target to be a potential threat. An adept manipulator, Rhoda can easily charm and mislead adults, while eliciting fear and revulsion from other children, who can sense that something is wrong with her. It is implied that she inherited these traits from her maternal grandmother Bessie Denker, who was a famous convicted serial killer. By the time her mother Christine puts the facts together, Rhoda has already killed at least two people and a dog. She also kills Leroy Jessup, the apartment building's live-in gardener. When Christine uncovers Rhoda's dark secret, she attempts murder-suicide by Rhoda by giving her enough pills to cause an overdose and shooting herself; however, this proves to be unsuccessful when their landlady saves Rhoda's life. Rhoda is indifferent to her mother's suicide and it is implied she will follow in the footsteps of her infamous grandmother.
In the decade the novel was published, juvenile delinquency began to be far more common, or at least more extensively reported and documented. Compared to earlier history, the idea of child crimes was a new phenomenon. A controversy about nature vs nurture arose as psychiatric explanations were proposed for juvenile delinquency, with the debate being whether inborn tendencies ("nature") are more or less important than environmental factors ("nurture") in explaining deviant behavior.
Supporters of the “nature” side suggested that some people are born evil or with malicious tendencies. The idea that nature prevails over nurture is implied in The Bad Seed. March incorporates the notion that a murderous genetic trait is being passed down through the generations. Within the plot of the story, Rhoda is a serial murderer just like her grandmother, having inherited the murderous gene. Rhoda had been brought up as a privileged child; she was nurtured emotionally and physically and thus a broken home life was not to blame for her actions. Tasker hints and suggests at the idea of nature taking effect when he quotes that "some people are just born evil", when discussing Denker with Christine.
Psychologist Robert D. Hare, who argues that the evidence suggests psychopathy is an inborn trait, discusses The Bad Seed in his 1993 non-fiction book Without Conscience. A lengthy quote from the novel opens Hare's book, describing in March's words how most decent individuals are not by nature suspicious and thus unable to understand or anticipate the acts of evil and depravity that some people are capable of committing. Later in his book, Hare argues that March's novel is a "remarkably true to life" portrayal of the development of psychopathy in childhood, illustrating both Rhoda's callous use of others to serve her own ends as well as Christine's growing helplessness and desperation as she realizes the extent of her daughter's behavior.[1]
"Let it be said quickly: William March knows where human fears and secrets are buried. He announced it in Company K, a novel published twenty years ago and equaled only by Dos Passos' Three Soldiers as a sampling of men at war. He has proved it again and again in the other novels and short stories, all of them floored and walled in what Clifton Fadiman decided to call "Psychological acumen". But nowhere is this gift better displayed than in The Bad Seed — the portrayal of a coldly evil, murderous child and what she does to both victims and family. In the author's hands this is adequate material for an absolutely first class novel of moral bewilderments and responsibilities nearest the heart of our decade."
"Dark, original, ultimately appalling, William March's extraordinary new novel is, on the obvious level, a straightforward, technically accomplished story of suspense. The manner of its telling — the dispassionate, exact, almost starched prose, with its occasional glints of sardonic humor — is an impressive achievement in itself. It lends some credibility to a narrative against which the imagination rebels; and towards the end, as horror is piled upon horror, it saves the book from falling headlong into absurdity... This is a novel bound to arouse strong responses, to generate vehement discussion, and so not easily to be forgotten."
"The Bad Seed would have been a stronger novel without this false premise — the granddaughter of a murderess is no more likely to be a murderess than the granddaughter of a seamstress, or anyone else. Apart from this flaw, however, The Bad Seed is a novel of suspense and mounting horror, which the reader who can close his eyes to March's unnecessary premise will enjoy as the work of one of the most satisfying of American novelists."
"The Bad Seed is terrifyingly good, not only because its theme is worked out so powerfully, but because every character is convincing. One has to believe that these appalling things took place exactly as the author says they did."
See main article: The Bad Seed (play). Maxwell Anderson adapted the book for the stage almost immediately after its publication. Anderson had previously won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1935 and 1936 for his plays Winterset and High Tor, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1933 for his play Both Your Houses. Reginald Denham directed the play using Anderson's script. The play opened on Broadway on December 8, 1954, at the 46th Street Theatre (now the Richard Rodgers Theatre), less than a year after the publication of the novel.
On April 25, 1955, the play transferred to the Coronet Theatre (now the Eugene O'Neill Theatre), where it completed its successful run of 334 performances on September 27, 1955. Nancy Kelly, the actress who played Christine, won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. The audience made claims that Patty McCormack, the child actress who played Rhoda, was the most memorable character.
See main article: The Bad Seed (1956 film). Mervyn LeRoy was the director of the 1956 movie. In LeRoy's Hollywood career, he produced and or directed over 70 films including Little Caesar and Little Women. Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack and most of the original cast acted in the 1956 movie. The ending of the 1956 film was changed from that of the novel and the play to comply with the Hollywood Production Code. Rhoda is suddenly struck and killed by lightning when she goes back to the scene of her crime to retrieve the medal (allowing an interpretation of divine intervention), while Christine survives her suicide attempt. During the closing credits, LeRoy added a light-hearted sequence of Nancy Kelly, Christine, holding Patty McCormack, Rhoda, over her leg and spanking her - possibly to remind audiences that this is just a movie.
See main article: The Bad Seed (1985 film). The Bad Seed was remade as a television movie in 1985, adapted by George Eckstein and directed by Paul Wendkos and kept the novel's original ending but changed other details, including some forenames (i.e. Claude Daigle → Mark Daigle, Hortense Daigle → Rita Daigle, Claudia Fern → Alice Fern) and added a scene in which young Christine escapes into a cornfield from her own sociopathic mother, Bessie Denker.
This version starred Blair Brown as Christine, Lynn Redgrave as Monica, David Ogden Stiers as Emory (whose character is hinted to be a closeted homosexual), David Carradine as Leroy, and Chad Allen as Mark Daigle (whose character was never seen before, only referenced). Carrie Wells played the title character, whose name was changed from Rhoda to Rachel. The TV-movie version was considered inferior to both the play and original film by critics.
See main article: The Bad Seed (2018 film). In December 2017, Deadline Hollywood reported that Rob Lowe would direct and star in a television remake for Lifetime network.[2] This version of The Bad Seed first ran on Lifetime on September 9, 2018, and was watched by 1.87 million viewers, placing it in the top ten most-watched cable programs on that date.[3] However, the production received mixed reviews.[4] [5]
A sequel, The Bad Seed Returns, was released in 2022.