Rhoda Penmark

Rhoda Penmark is a fictional character in William March's 1954 novel The Bad Seed and the stage play adapted from it by Maxwell Anderson. She was portrayed by Patty McCormack in the 1956 film adaptation and by Carrie Wells in the 1985 made for TV remake.

Related Topics:
Fictional character - 1954 - The Bad Seed - Stage play - Maxwell Anderson - Patty McCormack - 1956 - 1985 - Made for TV

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Rhoda Penmark is an eight-year-old girl who, in the course of the novel, murders a classmate and the janitor who suspected her. Despite coming from a loving home with doting parents, she is a sociopath, devoid of conscience and willing to do anything, including committing murder, to get what she wants. She is also a precociously talented con artist, using a sweet, innocent facade to mask her true self from adults so they will give in to her. This act doesn't work on other children, who sense who and what she truly is and avoid her.

Related Topics:
Murder - Sociopath - Conscience - Con artist

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March's explanation for Rhoda's evil is that it is genetic. Her maternal grandmother was a serial killer, who also began killing at a young age; Rhoda's mother, Christine, was adopted as an infant and so doesn't remember her real parents. It was at about the time in which the novel was written that scientists began to explore the genetic roots of behavior.

Related Topics:
Evil - Genetic - Serial killer - Adopt

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Rhoda drowns a classmate who won a penmanship award she felt she deserved. At first, no one suspects her, but Christine begins to notice that she is acting strangely, throwing frightening tantrums and seeming detached and uncaring about the other child's death. She dismisses any possibility that something is wrong with her daughter as crazy, but she remains troubled.

Related Topics:
Drowns - Penmanship

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The only adults who see through Rhoda are Leroy, the somewhat addled school janitor, and, to a much lesser extent, her teacher Miss Fern (played in the film version by a far too young and beautiful actress, Joan Croydon, who died of unknown causes in 1985), who observes that she is a poor loser and rather selfish. Leroy spies on Rhoda and repeatedly threatens to "tell on her." Rhoda mocks him, saying no one would believe anything he said about her, but begins to make plans to get rid of him. It is around him that Rhoda reveals herself for what she is: remorseless, vindictive, and cruel.

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After talking with her adopted father and a neighbor who dabbles in psychiatric theories about personality, Christine recovers a long-repressed memory of her real mother, a serial poisoner who died in the electric chair. This intensifies her fears about Rhoda's behavior, and, when the dead child's mother drunkenly accuses Rhoda of stealing a penmanship award he had won, she searches Rhoda's room—and finds the award. She confronts Rhoda and is horrified when she matter-of-factly confesses to killing the other child. Rhoda, for her part, doesn't seem to understand what the fuss is about.

Related Topics:
Psychiatric theories - Recovers a long-repressed memory - Poison - Electric chair

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While Christine grapples with what to do, Rhoda decides to silence Leroy by locking him in a furnace room and setting it on fire. When she learns what her daughter has done, Christine makes a gut-wrenching decision: She must kill Rhoda to keep her from killing again. She puts poison in her daughter's warm milk, hoping she will die without pain, and then commits suicide by putting a gun to her head.

Related Topics:
Furnace - Suicide

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In the novel's closing scene, it is revealed that Rhoda survived when a neighbor heard the shot and took her to the hospital. Nobody is the wiser as to what Rhoda has done, and she is free to kill again, although the movie necessarily (considering the era) sanitized the ending and suffice it to say that Rhoda Penmark got her just desserts on celluloid.

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