Edmond Dantes who is supposed to be his friend, over to the French authorities as a traitor and supporter of the exiled ruler Napoleon Bonaparte. Dantes escapes his tomb-like prison, and in the figure of Monte Christo gets his revenge on Ferdinand. Mercedes, who had married Ferdinand in Dantes’ absence, is considered by him a traitor, until he finds out she had been told he was dead. Her own doubts of her actions lead her in the end to the neutral place of a nunnery. The now rich Dantes, together with his actions of revenge, must be identified as evil. This oscillating story between good and evil and their changing place forms a very tortuous presentation of the match for love and power.
Jane Austen’s book Persuasion is much simpler than that, and the parts of good and evil are well defined in it. The evil doer is Anne’s cousin Elliot, who is discovered as a dishonest man who had acquired his wealth in crooked ways. Her other suitor is the righteous Captain Wentworth, who has earned his money honestly. Anne, the heroine, indeed holds in her hand the power of happiness for either of these men, and in the end she makes the good choice, which will be the best for her. In this book, a crave for riches which is the symbol of the Underworld and evil is, indeed, the power behind the scenes which really determines who is good and who is evil.
IV
There is, then, a development, which can be clearly seen from the various stages of ancient myth, to Medieval fairy tales and modern literature, especially in regard to the position of Woman between the two rivals and the various ideas about good and evil, who vie for her love and the power it grants. When the Goddess of Nature ruled alone, there were no