The Bad Beginning

As the eldest of the Baudelaire children, Violet becomes their leader when they’re orphaned, and she continues in that role when they’re forced to live with the evil Count Olaf. She works well with her younger brother, Klaus, and together they demonstrate the book’s themes of Ingenuity and Teamwork in a Crisis. She ties up her long hair away from her eyes when she’s thinking, which connects her to the novel’s motif of eyeballs: While Count Olaf’s multiple eyeballs keep a figurative watch over the children, Violet keeps her own eyesight unobscured in order to look back and resist. Similarly, Violet “never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair” (3), making her tied-up hair emblematic of the text’s idea of the seriousness of children’s experiences, particularly in contrast to the triviality of Count Olaf’s many demands such as roast beef in Chapter 4.

As the main protagonist, Violet tries, despite the odds, to keep her siblings safe. She hence exhibits the qualities of a stoic hero, particularly when she agrees to marry Count Olaf to save Sunny (before she devises the brilliant stratagem of signing the fateful wedding certificate with the wrong hand, thus nullifying the document).