The 10 most dramatic deaths in fiction

In the wake of the killing-off of our beloved Mark Darcy in Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding, here are our top ten greatest deaths in fiction. Be warned, the following article contains spoilers

Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina
Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina Credit: Photo: UPI

1. Anna in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878)

It all goes wrong for the heroine of Leo Tolstoy’s tragic novel, when she gets ditched by her lover, ostracised by society, and prevented from seeing her son by her cuckolded husband. Distraught, Anna leaps in front of a train travelling at a rate of knots.

2. Lavinia in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (1588-1593)

In Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy, the only daughter of Titus is dealt a poor hand (no pun intended). Twenty-one of her brothers are killed in battle before the play even begins, but Lavinia’s fate is also pretty terrible. Raped in a pit, her tongue is cut out and hands cut off to prevent her revealing the identity of her attackers. Revenge is served up – quite literally – when Titus Andronicus bakes her two rapists in a pie and feeds them to their mother, and, before the feasting crowd, he ends Lavinia’s misery by breaking her neck.

3. Leonard Bast in EM Forster’s Howards End (1910)

Poor old Leonard Bast. He never did have much luck. It all started with a stolen umbrella in a torrential downpour. There begins the rapid descent into a bleak quagmire with the hapless Bast bouncing from one debacle to the next. Bast’s affair with the free-spirited Helen Schlegel – while he is married – results in her falling pregnant. When Leonard shows up at the family home of the Wilcox family – Helen’s upper-class in-laws – he meets a sticky end as Charles Wilcox exacts revenge. After being belted with the flat edge of a sword, Leonard grasps a bookcase, which crushes him. Riddled with heart disease, it didn’t take much for poor Leonard’s heart to give out.

4. Charlotte Haze in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955)

The mother of the subject of Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita is something of an oddity. First, she gives her hebephile lodger an ultimatum: marry her or move out. Humbert Humbert marries Charlotte. Oblivious to her new husband’s distaste for her, she is shocked to discover Humbert’s infatuation with her 12-year-old daughter, Lolita. Fleeing the house in panic and carrying the solemn burden of Humbert’s secret, fate intervenes and Charlotte is struck by a passing car, killing her in swift timely fashion.

5. Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847)

Self-imposed incarceration and starvation is a particularly slow and excruciating way to expire, even if you do find yourself in the throes of delirium. Love hurts, Catherine, but is haunting your beloved Heathcliff until his death really the best way to appease your suffering?

6. Septimus Warren Smith in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925)

A First World War veteran suffering from shell-shock, Septimus Warren Smith is plagued by hallucinations of birds singing in Greek. Frustrated by the doctors who gave him a clean bill of health, Septimus chooses to end his days by auto-defenestration.

7. Eustacia Vye in Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native (1878)

A raven-haired beauty longing for a world beyond Egdon Heath, Eustacia is faced with a quandary when her former lover, Wildeve, offers to help her travel to Paris, thus leaving her husband and becoming Wildeve’s mistress. When Eustacia and Wildeve’s spouses get wind of their plan, they are intercepted. In despair, Eustacia plunges into a weir and meets a tragic – and rather soggy – end. Was her death accidental, or did she knowingly jump to her death?

8. Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847)

It’s fair to say that Bertha Mason had a pretty raw deal. First, Mr Rochester, her husband, has her locked in the attic because she’s mad. Then, he falls in love with the 18-year-old governess and tries to commit bigamy by marrying Jane Eyre. Just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, Bertha sets fire to Thornfield Hall and jumps off the roof.

9. Cecilia in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides (1993)

Thirteen-year-old Cecilia is a stoic loner with four sisters. Cecilia attempts suicide by cutting her wrists (she fails), but later succeeds by plunging from a second-storey window and impaling herself on a fence post. Even more shocking are the subsequent suicides of all four other siblings.

10. Albus Dumbledore in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter And the Half-Blood Prince (2005)

The loss of Albus Dumbledore sent shock waves through the wizarding world. The wizard had less than a year to live following several complications stemming from a cursed ring, when he was euthanised at the hand of Severus Snape, leaving an irreparable chasm in the Harry Potter world.