Violet

Violet is the 14 year old eldest of the three Baudelaire orphans in Lemony Snicket’s series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, beginning in 2004. She is a very talented inventor (the automatic rolling pin!), often coming up with ingenious devices to help her and her siblings out of the many dangerous circumstances in which they find themselves as a result of their adoption by the evil Count Olaf. She is a spunky, positive-minded and very protective of her younger brother and sister – all in all, a fine role model for any young girl, and not at all too-good-to-be-true.

Violet is the gum-chewing little terror who wins a Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory in Roald Dahl’s 1964 book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (also translated into two successful movies). She is one of five children to find the tickets in the Wonka chocolate bars, which entitle them to a trip to the factory and a chance to win the grand prize. All of the children are obnoxious in their own delightful ways, which makes the “accidents” that happen to them all the more fun. Violet’s comeuppance occurs when she disobediently tries a three course meal contained within a stick of gum and swells up like a giant blueberry. Although it has been criticized as depicting children in a negative manner and doling out harsh consequences to their actions, it has always been loved by its primary audience – children themselves.

Violet is a main character of Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz, published in 1992. Taking its rhythm from its name, the story weaves and drifts, disconnects and reconnects, creating a nonlinear composition of haunting variations. Violet is the fifty-six year of African American wife whose husband has cheated on her with a young woman, an act that drives her mad, makes her “Violent”. Her husband, Joe, kills his young lover, and Violet attacks her dead body at the funeral. Somehow, out of these sordid beginnings, rises a tale that helps us understand the origins of lovelessness and human yearnings, the indignities of slavery, the powerful healing of forgiveness and the final redemption of the courage to live life.