[The Duchess of Mint]

Dear "Sweeney Todd" Fans,

What sort of a childhood do you think that Mrs. Lovett had?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[Joshua]

I think she was spawned of stem cell research followed by a long childhood of waxing poles at the local "pub" to earn money for her mother's crack addiction.

[ActingDude17]

[actor]

She probably didn't receive much love or attention from her parents which is why she craves both so much in later life.
There's also a chance she didn't have a mother figure in her life which is why she's so desperate to be a mother figure to Toby.

[dolbinau]

I think she had a normal childhood; I'm one of the ones who don't think Lovett is as bad as people say she is.

[Joshua]

[dolbinau]

[Joshua]

[dolbinau]

[Luc]

She's evil in more ways than she is good.

[what_the_heck013]

I actually wrote a fanfic about this that I can not find at the moment.

Mrs. Lovett was the sort of girl who wasn't very pretty. She could never get "the guy". So she went around dreaming about him. She was the sort of girl, who (almost like Fosca in Passion) would become obsessed with a man. After almost a lifetime of being single and alone, Benjamin Barker comes along. She cannot let this man slip away. He has a fiancee, but she doesn't care. So what does she do? She makes a deal with Judge Turpin to get rid of Lucy Barker, but she misunderstands, and Benjamin is sent away too. Heartbroken, but with Lucy out of the picture, Mrs. Lovett decides to wait for Barker, after all "all good things come to those who can wait".

I don't think Mrs. Lovett is evil, per se, either. Her actions, the way I see it, are motivated by love. The way in which she does it is evil, but her goal throughout the play is not the be evil, it is to gain back the love of Benjamin Barker (Sweeney Todd).

I would see this musical as a love story.

[Clarabelle]

I don't think she is evil; I think she is, like Sweeney, motivated by obsession and because she is pretty much amoral, she doesn't see why she should stop at nothing to meet her ends.

She is trying to eke out a living in very hard times; her husband has died a long time ago and she has nobody to provide for her. Suddenly someone comes along who she used to know (and presumably had feelings for then, or why would she have kept the razors for all that time if she didn't care?), and this man, in her mind, could SAVE her. Sweeney comes in and almost immediately she starts fixating, not on killings, but on the life they could have as a couple. If you read their exchanges in 'My Friends', and 'Wait' you can clearly see that while he thinks of nothing but the judge, she thinks of nothing but Sweeney.

Even when he has killed Pirelli (which she has no hand in, and is initially a bit shocked) she doesn't say 'great!' she rationalises his behaviour, to make it better for herself (have you ever known someone go out with an unsuitable partner who does that with their bad habits?). She doesn't care about the Judge, or Sweeney's mission; she cares about making a home and a comfortable life for the pair of them which is why she says so calmly at the end of 'Epiphany' - 'that's all very well, but what are we going to do with him?'. It's not 'OH MY GOD it's a body' or 'Yes, now you can kill the judge'. It is looking at a problem and viewing it with a practical, though amoral, eye.

In fact, the point where she starts to unravel is really when she locks Toby in the cellar, because she realises someone else knows and she is torn between her 'son' and her 'lover'. She does show hints that she isn't completely amoral because she lies by omission rather than outright, showing she understands the difference.

I think that to say she is evil completely misses the point of her character. To answer the OP, I would imagine that she was brought up to know her place and learnt to get what she wanted by stealth and manipulation rather than any other way; married young, probably not that poor if she went on holiday as a young child to the seaside, and has seen her standard of living drop dramatically and so she's learnt to survive on her own which is why she is such a lonely character, obsessed with the idea of having a family of her own.

For evil characters I'd say that probably the Beadle is quite evil, and the Judge is also quite evil as he is prepared to abuse his power and knows he is wrong for doing it.

[what_the_heck013]

Clarabelle, you get the gold star for today!

[Sweeney Hyde]

Jaymie, that is actually a very interesting take on her background! Like...it would tie in perfectly if the show had been a three act show with the first act being your fanfiction! HA!

[Clarabelle]

[what_the_heck013]