Psychopaths ?

Ruth Rendell quotes this personnality description by Stafford-Clark : “Emotional immaturity in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. Impulsive, feckless, unwilling to accept the results of experience and unable to profit by them. Sometimes prodigal of effort but utterly lacking in persistence, plausible but insincere, demanding but indifferent to appeals, dependable only in their constant unreliability, faithful only to infidelity, rootless, unstable, rebellious and unhappy” (I underlined).

Stafford-Clark is talking about psychopaths. Was the woman who inspired the characters of Isabelle in School of Serpents and Eileen in School of contempt a psychopath ? I really don’t think so. Yet, in those two novels of mine, she fits Stafford-Clark’s description perfectly. Like so many wealthy women, she was just a spoiled brat who never thought of anyone but herself, and was unconsciously encouraged to do so by her parents.

In her novels, Ruth Rendell also creates a similar, recurrent character : a young woman who is beautiful, attractive and far from stupid, but who totally illustrates Stafford-Clark’s analysis. It’s like a leitmotiv. I can only suppose that Ruth Rendell herself had suffered from the presence of such a person in her family or career environment. I know I did.