Control Freak

When “The Bad Seed,” William March’s sixth novel, was published in April 1954, even its author couldn’t have predicted the impact it would have. The story of 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark, an obedient, intelligent girl who is also a killer with neither conscience nor compassion, struck an immediate chord with the public and sold more than a million copies, spawning a Broadway adaptation and an Academy Award-nominated film. Not only did March’s feral child influence dozens of horror writers, but his title also became a popular catch phrase repeated by countless people who’d never heard of the author’s name. March always longed for such attention; his friend Alistair Cooke once called him “the unrecognized genius of our time,” yet March was never able to overcome the sense that his work was marginal. Then, in a particularly bitter piece of irony, he missed that much desired popularity when he died at 60 on May 15, 1954--only a month after “The Bad Seed” was published.

Given its enduring pop culture legacy, it seems strange that “The Bad Seed” should ever have fallen out of print. For some time, however, it has been unavailable and largely forgotten--known, if at all, only for the movie which it inspired. Now, in what ranks as one of the year’s most unlikely reclamation projects, Ecco Press has reissued “The Bad Seed” in an edition featuring an introduction by critic Elaine Showalter that suggests that the book is, in the words of critic Gilbert Milstein, “a true artistic achievement,” merging elements of literature and pulp fiction to become a hybrid of both. That’s a compelling argument, for March’s novel is, at times, dense and multilayered with vivid descriptions and a degree of narrative nuance that heightens its not inconsiderable suspense.

But whether one considers it a lost classic or a potboiler, as its author believed, “The Bad Seed” remains as creepy a piece of writing as exists in the language: a subtle evocation of the way evil appears in unexpected places and utterly transforms people’s lives.

What propels “The Bad Seed” is March’s sense of pacing, his mastery of tension and mood. He develops the narrative slowly, submerging us in every situation until our own anticipation frightens us as much as the action on the page. Unlike his more modern counterparts, he does not overwhelm us with gore or body counts: Rhoda kills only two people and, for the most part, she’s a quiet, if somewhat distant, little girl. Still, March telegraphs her murderous impulses from the moment we meet her, describing her hair as “plaited precisely in two narrow-braids which were looped back into two thin hangman-nooses” and, as the story progresses, he reveals her depravity in slow, incremental stages. Most disconcerting is the way Rhoda’s crimes are not passionate but reflect what March calls her “cold intensity,” her placid, predatory take on the world. Even after her mother, Christine, discovers her secret, the girl remains shrewdly in control.

“[W]earily,” March writes, “while the child stood in amusement before her, though outwardly submissive, as she always was, [Christine] added, ‘How did you manage it with the old lady in Baltimore? I know so much now, another thing won’t matter greatly.’ And Rhoda, sure of her triumph, smiled and said meekly, ‘I shoved her, Mother. I shoved her a little.’ ”

Such a statement--with its matter-of-fact indifference--is absolutely chilling, and March makes it more so by presenting it not from Rhoda’s point of view but from Christine’s. In fact, nearly all of “The Bad Seed” unfolds through the eyes of the older woman as she comes to realize the truth about her child. To heighten this, March gives Christine her own deep dark secret, building a substantial subplot around a repressed memory that may provide the key to Rhoda’s personality. Not only does this subplot add a certain depth to the narrative, it also transforms “The Bad Seed” from a suspense thriller into the story of a mother who, faced with a horrifying revelation, is caught between loyalty to her daughter and responsibility to society at large.

“[T]he fact remained,” she tells herself, “no matter what the child had done, that she was their own flesh and blood, and plainly it was their duty to protect her against the cruelty of the world. . . . Of course, she’d look out for the welfare of others, too; she’d constantly watch her child to see that she harmed nobody else. But . . . [w]hat kind of monster would she be if she betrayed and destroyed her own child?”

To some extent, these ruminations can be read as a response to the time in which “The Bad Seed” was written. The 1950s was a period of paranoia and anxiety, when a premium was put on appearances, on the importance of playing by the rules. Thus, even Rhoda’s docile exterior may symbolize the superficial conformity that was the ideal in those years. But more to the point, Christine’s turmoil reveals that “The Bad Seed” is a novel in which what takes place, involves flesh-and-blood human beings, not archetypes of good and evil. For that reason, as much as any other, this taut and terrifying story continues to resound.