V for Vendetta

The latter half of Book 1 explores how seemingly “good” people can commit terrible acts, unpacks the motivation for V’s vendetta, and examines the role of women within a patriarchal fascist state.

When V comes to kill Delia, the first thing she says is, “Oh thank God” (70). When Finch reads Delia’s diary to the Leader, the reasons for her gratitude become clear: She is guilty about the horrific human experiments she conducted. After reading Delia’s story, Finch says, “She was a good woman, a humane woman. But then I read the diary and…I don’t know. I don’t know. She’s dead now” (84). Finch’s impression of Delia was that she was a “good woman,” but her diary details undeniably inhumane acts, such as dehumanization and racialized human experimentation.

At one point, Delia writes that “the women are slightly more resistant than the men. Especially the Black women” (80). This plays into racist stereotypes that Black people, women especially, are more physically resilient or less susceptible to pain than other races—stereotypes that excused violent chattel slavery and persist in systems of medical bias and malpractice in the 21st century. While she does these objectively horrible acts, Delia also dislikes Prothero, who is vulgar and unpleasant, and the Bishop, who she calls “that creepy padre” (80).

When she is talking to V, Delia calls her memories of what she did at Larkhill “terrible knowledge. It’s been with me so long. That I could do things like that” (73). She references the Milgram experiment, an infamous psychological experiment about what people will do if they are following the orders of an authority figure. Delia seems to see this as the underlying reason for her actions, but she also concludes that “people are stupid and evil. There’s something wrong with us…Some hideous flaw…we deserve to be culled” (73). Delia mistakes the actions of people cooperating with fascism for the actions people will naturally do—this shows the effectiveness of the fascist machine, which seeks to integrate its ideology with the natural human condition. In many ways, Delia is an agent of inhumane violence, but in others, she is a casualty of the system she exists in.

Notably, Delia—the only woman employee at Larkhill—is the only one to repent her past actions. One of Eco’s key tenets of fascism is the exercise of machismo, an aggressive, often sexually-inflected masculine pride (Eco, “Ur-Fascism”). This kind of masculine violence is at play during Evey’s confrontation with the Bishop and in Almond’s interactions with Rosemary. In both cases, paradigms of gendered violence fail in upholding the power of the hierarchies that animate the fascist state. Instead, they result in the demise of the people who exercise this violence.

V is a deft strategist and is aware of the Bishop’s interests in underage girls. The Bishop’s use of a child sex-trafficking agency is reliable enough that V can exploit it to carry out his vendetta, using Evey as a distraction while he sneaks into the Bishop’s room. The Bishop uses his age, station, and influence to gain power over vulnerable, underage girls. He feigns politeness toward Evey while he sees her as a sexual conquest. After she resists him, he devolves into threats of violence, but V has already infiltrated his rooms to kill him. Therefore, not only is the Bishop’s abusive use of power thwarted, but his predictable reliance on masculine violence enables his own murder.

Almond’s death likewise results from his exercise of aggressive masculine violence. In Chapter 9, when Rosemary tries to talk to Almond about their relationship, he hits her and screams at her. In Chapter 10, Almond wakes Rosemary up by pointing a gun in her face. Eco writes that “the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise” (Eco, “Ur-Fascism”). The gun held inches from Rosemary’s face as she sleeps in their marital bed represents both physical and sexual violence. Before he is called away to Delia’s house, Almond pulls the trigger and tells Rosemary he didn’t load the gun, though he implies that he will next time.

In Chapter 10, Almond runs into V in the hallway of Delia’s house. He taunts him before attempting to shoot him, saying, “You’re standing over there with your bloody fancy knives and your bloody fancy karate gimmicks…and I’ve got a gun” (76). However, the gun—which moments before he used to threaten Rosemary—is still empty, giving V the chance to kill him. Therefore, the very tool Almond uses to enact his masculine violence is what leads to his death.

Importantly, the violence employed by the Bishop and Almond is different than the violence V uses, as Almond points out when comparing V’s skills with his gun. V employs violence against institutions and their agents to abolish unnecessary and exploitative hierarchies, while the violence Almond wields over Rosemary is intended to subjugate and reinforce hierarchy.