Special:Badtitle/NS90:User talk:DocColress/The great big examples suggestion topic!/reply (26)

I think to get our minds off of silly non-examples and the like, I'll propose a very definite one who I feel a bit bad about not remembering until recently. Now from my Junior and Senior years of High School Literature, I read about all sorts of lovely villains such as Bob Ewell, Napoleon, as well as Abigail Williams and Danforth. This woman however I believe sickened me more than any of those people and for good reason as she is basically everything wrong with the sex-trafficking industry all bundled up in a loathsome human form. Her name is Mumtaz, and she is from a book called Sold.

Who is Mumtaz?: Mumtaz is a sadistic and greedy madam who runs a brothel called The Happiness House in an Indian red-light district.

What does she do?: Hoo boy. Whenever the innocent, naïve thirteen year-old protagonist Lakshmi is tricked into going with a mysterious man from her Nepalese village down to India, she doesn't quite know what she's been signed up for until Mumtaz leads her to a room where a rather gross old man paid for her sexual services is lying in wait. Whenever she realizes what exactly is in store for her, she fights back when he makes an advance and runs away, only for Mumtaz to chase her down and lock her in a small room where she's starved and savagely beaten unless Lakshmi submits. She refuses, and this treatment goes on for about five days until Mumtaz gets fed up with waiting and drugs her up so she can make her "please" her customers.

There's also the fact that Mumtaz has Lakshmi and the other girls at the house up to their eyeballs in debt that she forces them to make up for with their services. But of course she has no intention of letting them go as long as they can make money for her, as she adds to their debt buy making them pay for condoms, medicine, and other things and basically keeps them stuck in their situation for good. There are a couple of workers there who are there of their own free will and can leave at any time, such as a sickly mother named Pushpa, though their situations aren't much better. For example: Pushpa works at the brothel so she can take care of her young son and infant daughter, and is constantly in agony due to her constant sickness. She needs a day off to rest that Mumtaz of course denies her, threatening to kick her family out onto the street if she does since that's a day where she isn't earning any money. And once Pushpa gets too sick to work any longer, Mumtaz makes good on her threat and orders her and her son to leave and never come back. She does offer to take care of her baby for her... though it's far from noble as she wants to make her a prostitute when she becomes old enough.

And then, there's another thing that I feel truly and irrevocably put her up in this status that still gives me the shivers to this day: the most horrifying fate she has in store for employees who try to escape or receive gifts from clients. For this punishment, she has the brothel's cook grind up chili-peppers into a spicy mixture that Mumtaz dips a stick into. She then takes it and SHOVES IT UP THE GENITALS of whichever girl "needed to be taught a lesson." I apologize for the sudden caps, but still, how sick do you have to be subject someone to that kind of pain and not regret it in the slightest? Thankfully, she ends up getting arrested as the girls from the brothel are saved after a successful police raid at the end of the book.

Is she heinous by the standards of the story?: Do you really have to ask? While other unpleasant characters are in the book such as the Lakshmi's greedy stepfather who sells her into prostitution and the guy who made the offer and took her down to India, Mumtaz eclipses them and everyone else in terms of heinousness.

Any Freudian Excuse or Redeeming Qualities?: Hell. No. She is incredibly cruel and savage towards the girls and is properly feared and loathed by the girls she has at the Happiness House. There IS a brief moment where Lakshmi feels that she loves her after being nursed back to health after being afflicted with a disease, but she was delirious and not in her right mind at the time, and she continues to fear her afterwards. Mumtaz does have one loyal worker who will rat out any of the girls who are trying anything funny, but I don't remember her and Mumtaz having a good relationship or anything, she's more or less a crony of sorts and doesn't get a lot of characterization if memory serves. And while she gives medicine to girls who are feeling sick and won't have them work if they contract HIV, it's pragmatic villainy as she doesn't want to lose customers and views these sick workers as being a hindrance to her business. And leaving the girls to die in the streets of a red light district in a country that isn't kind to prostitutes is hardly a redeeming quality either.

The Verdict?: I'd honestly be surprised if she didn't qualify, she exploits children for profit by putting them into prostitution for god's sake, and happily makes money off of them without caring about them in the slightest.

And this is my last example for a while. Truth be told I would have suggested her around the time I bought up Augustine (Who I feel I need to do a re-write on as her entry is HUGE), I just wasn't thinking about her until now. As for now, Mumtaz, Stromboli, and Augustine were the only characters I wanted to present for the time being and I'll likely be gone for a while unless I take in another form of media with another of these delightful creatures in it.