“Nothing is more common than for men to mask their vices under the guise of virtue.” Cicero
“The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.” Bodhidharma
“Each betrayal begins with trust.” Martin Luther
“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.” Benjamin Franklin
“He never underestimates the force of offended entitlement…” Tana French, The Keeper
Recently, I read John Grisham’s Sycamore Row, a fascinating character study, and it reminded me of other stories about greed and dysfunction throughout the course of literature. Greed has played a significant role in oral traditions and creative writing from The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BCE), Aesop’s Fables (6th century BCE), Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey (8th century BCE), and Ovid’s myth of King Midas from Metamorphoses (around 8 CE) onward. The Bible (BCE-1st century), both old and new testaments, has a wealth of commentary on greedy behavior, including the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not covet), not to mention Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, and a host of other writers.
Greed is a nasty business. Common traits typically display as vulgar, manipulative, scheming and grasping behavior, oftentimes revealing some of the same characteristics as the garden variety sociopath. Rapacity characterizes the mentality that is now dominant in our present political climate, a 21st century Gilded Age, exemplified by our current President, the country’s oligarchs and assorted robber barons, and their supporters. In fact, the cover story of the August 2026 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek features a wolf in sheep’s clothing and is entitled: “The Golden Age of Grift. Why it feels like everybody is trying to pull one over on you.”
A recent, newsworthy example of this kind of petty and destructive behavior occurred just a few months ago in Alabama when 86 year old French widow Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé was arrested by ICE and chained by the wrists and ankles to other prisoners for 16 days in a Louisiana detention center, unable to contact her three children in France. The backstory is that she and her American husband, Bill Ross, met in the 50s in France where he was stationed. He eventually returned to the States; they married other people and had children. Sixty years later they reconnected, fell in love, married, and she moved to Alabama where he lived. When he died in January, his two sons came to the house, changed the locks, drove off with his new truck and Mercedes, cut off the utilities, and re-routed the mail so that she missed her immigration appointment. One of the sons, a retired Alabama state trooper, then reported her to ICE where she languished in prison until her family, with the intervention of the French government and a court order, were able to secure her release and subsequent flight back to France. The house was valued at $175,000, the checking account balance was $1500, and there were two vehicles. Well.
Greed is the type of tawdry behavior lawyers, particularly those who deal with the division of assets after divorce or death, verify they frequently see in their work. Psychiatrists and psychologists say greed stems from feelings of deep insecurity and inadequacy with roots in narcissism, affecting empathy and self-control. Politicians in the US, depending on party, either focus on corporate greed or government overreach, yet most Americans feel politicians themselves are primarily motived by self-enrichment. Greed is an unpleasant and ignoble aspect of human nature, frequently exacerbated by perceived feelings of persecution or a sense of injustice. One thing is certain, when there is money involved, the vultures begin to circle.
Contemporary literary examples featuring greed abound, and dysfunctional families are often at their core. Such families include physically and verbally abusive parents, drug and alcohol abuse, kids that torture and kill small animals or birds (the road that often leads to “conduct disorders” in later life), and various other types of criminal behavior. Commonplace, but no less reprehensible, greedy behavior is an unpleasant but psychologically intriguing trait in these twisted family dramas. Herewith are some examples in literature that further explore and clarify the different layers of betrayal involved in the pursuit of money and property. What price happiness, eh?
Lillian Hellman
THE LITTLE FOXES, Lillian Hellman, 1939
The first play I’ve read since my Tennessee Williams/Ibsen period in the 60s, I found an old paperback version of The Little Foxes online. (Tallulah Bankhead was Regina in the original stage production.) Unsympathetic characters litter this melodrama — two brothers, a sister (Regina), and a nephew make up this unlikeable foursome, a virtual conclave of loathsome relatives. They will all turn on each other in an attempt to seize the upper hand in a business dispute and disposition of a will.
Although the play takes place in a small Alabama town in the spring of 1900, the implications and resonance of the described family relationships ring true today. Despite some racially insensitive and chauvinistic comments more commonly used at the time but jarring when heard today, the play describes the culture of the 1930s in the South; it’s a play about class, breeding, status, opportunism and treachery. It’s a good versus evil clash — the malevolent nouveau riche foursome on the one side against the fragile aristocratic but impoverished sister-in-law, Regina’s ill and honorable husband, their empathetic and sensitive daughter, and the two black servants on the other side. It is also a clash between the haves and have nots — the entitled, inconsiderate and unaware versus the black servants who work for them (ie. shooting birds and small game only for pleasure and not letting the black servants and workers eat them).
Regina, confined by her role as a wife and woman and unable to live at the social level to which she aspires, feels completely justified in her quest for more wealth and position. She is ruthless and willing to sacrifice her husband and daughter to attain these goals. The brothers and nephew, committed to accumulating more and more wealth with their unending schemes, are quite prepared to forfeit their sister, and betray each other as well.
Watch William Wyler’s 1941 film starring an excellent Bette Davis as Regina, co-starring Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, and Richard Carlson, to fully bring the play to life. Some of the actors from the original stage play are also in the movie — Dan Duryea, John Marriott, Patricia Collinge, and Charles Dingle. The cinematography is dramatic, and the play’s re-enactment has only one small change in the plot. The film garnered 9 Academy Award nominations, including best picture, best director, and best actress.
An interesting note: The title of the play comes from the King James version of the Bible of the Song of Solomon (2:15): “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.”
Also, Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, the mystery writer, were intermittent lovers for 30 years. (Gleaned from Wikipedia)
Shirley Jackson
WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, Shirley Jackson, 1962
This is a psychological horror story. Two sisters, Constance and Mary Catherine (Merricat), and an uncle, Julian, lead a quiet but eerie existence in their large family estate. Julian is frail, suffers from dementia, and needs a lot of care, Catherine, the elder sister, cooks, is always patient and amiable, never leaves the house and only rarely ventures into the garden. Merricat, the unreliable narrator of this tale and a cunning, exceptionally disturbed girl, is the only one able to venture into the village to buy groceries. As the plot unfolds you realize that their separation from almost all interaction with the world and the villagers is the result of a notorious murder trial where Constance was accused and then acquitted of poisoning all but two members of her family at lunch — Julian and Merricat.
The villagers are jealous of the family’s status and money and dislike the family intensely. Enter Charles, a first cousin to the sisters, and nephew to the uncle. At first he tries to ingratiate himself with everyone on the pretext of reestablishing family ties, but he quickly alienates Julian and Merrycat with his inappropriate demands. Constance starts to succumb to his pressure as he wheedles and threatens, creating friction in the household. It is clear that he is after the family fortune — Constance is a stepping stone to that goal — and wants to send Julian and Merricat away. Disaster looms, a defining event ensues, and the ending is resolved in a typically disquieting Jackson fashion.
An interesting note: Shirley Jackson suffered from agoraphobia, one of the book’s dominant themes. (From Wikipedia)
Jane Smiley
A THOUSAND ACRES, Jane Smiley, 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner
An adaptation of King Lear, Smiley alters the relationship roles of the three sisters. Ginny, the narrator, is the Goneril equivalent, Rose is Regan and Caroline is Cordelia, but the story is more about Ginny than her father, Larry Cook, the Lear equivalent. The drama takes place on a large Iowa farm in Zebulon County, and there are many similarities to King Lear after the division of the farm into two, not three, sections. Larry is an autocrat, a cruel, austere and unpleasant man who brooks no dissent. There is a twist to the plot that later reveals another sinister aspect of Larry’s past behavior that has no similarity to Shakespeare’s play, but helps to explain Rose’s behavior.
Smiley has a great deal of working farm knowledge. You get a real sense of the daily grind of farming, and the family’s attachment to the land. There are vivid descriptions of the natural beauty of the property, and the need and constant effort to control nature. The family’s pride in what they have achieved is emphasized. Ginny says: “Most issues on a farm return to the issue of keeping up appearances.”
The deeply intertwined relationships between the two sisters, their husbands, and the returned prodigal son, Jess, is well defined, as is the description of the two patriarchs — Larry, avaricious and demented, and Harold (the Earl of Gloucester equivalent), avaricious and duplicitous — who manipulate their children’s lives to disastrous effect.
Rose is aggrieved by her perception of the harm done to her, and wants revenge. She says: “I want what was Daddy’s. I want it. I feel like I’ve paid for it, don’t you… I wanted him to feel remorse and know what he did and what he is, but when you see him around town and they talk about him, he’s just senile. He’s safe from ever knowing. People pat him on the head and sympathize with him and say what bitches we are, and he believes them and that’s that, the end of history. I can’t stand that.”
Ginny says to Rose: “I said,“I guess you want everything for yourself, huh? Rose replies: Well, shit, yeah. I always have. It’s my besetting sin. I’m grabby and jealous and selfish and Mommy said it would drive people away, so I’ve been good at hiding it.” In the end, after all the deceptions and deaths, Ginny perceptively reflects: “Rose left me a riddle I haven’t solved, of how we judge those who have hurt us when they have shown no remorse or even understanding.”
An interesting note: Jane Smiley taught for 15 years at Iowa State University, and “studied industrial farming practices and researched the environmental impacts of chemicals in well water.” (Gleaned from AI)
John Grisham
SYCAMORE ROW, John Grisham, 2013
A brutal take on racial divisions, the realities of small town life in Mississippi, and the cut throat maneuvering of trial lawyers, Grisham knows his way around that world and the court room. He also knows how to spin a compelling story peppered with legal observations and prescient commentary. A black housekeeper is left an enormous fortune by her employer, businessman Seth Hubbard, in a handwritten will he made the day before he hanged himself. Hubbard has sent a a very specific letter with instructions on how to administer the new will that cuts out his ne’er-do-well adult children and grandchildren. He sent the letter to Jake Brigance, a young lawyer in town known for a previous high profile court case win that resulted in his house being burned down by the Klan. Here we have another horrid bunch — a brother, sister, and her husband — who have always had a very distant and cold relationship with their father but who labor under the illusion that they have been cheated out of their rightful inheritance because it is their due. Their false claim they had a close and loving relationship with their father, and their aggrieved sense of entitlement emphasizes the fact they are only interested in his money. They are incensed and sue to have an older will reinstated. They claim their father was not competent to execute a new will and that the housekeeper unduly influenced their father.
You get a real sense of the structure of small town, Southern life — the history of early black and white settlers, the colorful personalities, the gossip and rumors, and the hierarchical social systems in place. You also are treated to a close examination of the Hubbard offspring’s manifest greed. The well drawn characters, the snappy dialogue and perceptive insights into personalities, traditions and racial prejudice are well described. The main question and motive – why did Hubbard make this new will — is a mystery until the end.
An interesting note: John Grisham was a former criminal defense and personal injury lawyer for ten years in Southaven, Mississippi, served as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives for seven years, and sits on the Board of the Innocence Project. (From Wikipedia)
Allegra Goodman
ISOLA, Allegra Goodman, 2025
This is the true story of Marguerite de la Rocque, a 16th century French noblewoman whose cousin, Jean-Francois de la Rocque de Roberval, seized control of her estate and income as her guardian after the death of her parents when she was three. Here we have an historical drama where greed is part of the fabric of life in the upper class. That life was concerned with status and the further accumulation of wealth through marriage or by favor of the King or Queen. Greed was an institutionalized condition of the upper classes.
There was no true familial affection between Marguerite and her cousin, only the enforced courtesy according to the custom of the times. This was the fate of most women then; they had little power or position without the protection of a father or husband. Marguerite’s cousin takes all of the income from her estates, rents the estate to a merchant family, and then sells it to them. He spends her inheritance funding exploratory sea missions looking for new land to claim for France. Once the house is sold, she must live with him as a captive in his house when he is in residence, hostage to his changing moods and threats.
Roberval forces Marguerite to accompany him on a sea journey. In the course of the journey she falls in love with his secretary despite Roberval’s warning, and they are severely punished. Roberval abandons both of them, along with her devoted nurse, on a remote island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For two years she must deal with finding shelter against the elements, imminent starvation, death, and fending off wild animals. It is a harrowing tale of survival, resilience, and faith.
An interesting note: André Thevet, Royal Cosmographer, interviewed Marguerite later in life and provided many details of this story. Queen Marguerite of Navarre claimed that Roberval himself told her the story (although why his version of the story would be accurate is questionable). (Gleaned from AI)