Violet Harmon

Violet Harmon is a teenage girl transported to a new home with her dysfunctional family. She is a character in the first season (dubbed by fans "Murder House") portrayed by Taissa Farmiga.

Background

Violet is the 17-year-old only child of the Harmon family. After her mother had a stillbirth, her father is caught having an affair with his psychology student, Hayden. As an attempt to keep the family together, Violet is forced to move to Los Angeles in order for her parents to have a fresh start. At first, she doesn't like the house that her father Ben wants them to live in, but upon learning about the murder-suicide committed there by and against the previous owners, she has a change of heart. It was her vocal opinion that persuaded her mother and father to buy the house.

Personality and Appearance

Violet is a pretty, clever and highly sardonic teenager. She is described by her mother as "fearless". She possesses a strong intellect and a sharp, witty demeanor. Violet is suffering from major clinical depression and engages in several instances of self-mutilation such as cutting herself and smoking cigarettes. Violet is attracted to the darker elements of the house and of life.

Normally fearless^[1], when encountering all of the ghosts in the house, she is overwhelmed with emotion and breaks down and tries overdosing on sleeping pills given to her by Leah.^[2]

Violet is a bit of a loner, and while she often seems to enjoy her individual lifestyle, she becomes increasingly isolated. She seems to have little to no respect for her father due to his affair. She has displayed some resentment toward her mother at times, but remains close with her.

Violet is quite thin with a petite build. Her wardrobe usually consists of layered items, including long dresses, cardigans, long-sleeved shirts, and hats. She has long light brown hair that she wears down and parted in the middle. She usually has a natural face, with very minimal makeup.

Story

Violet reluctantly moves from Boston to Los Angeles after her father, Ben Harmon, cheats on her mother Vivien Harmon. Her family bought the house with her approval even after learning there was a murder-suicide by the previous owners. She starts school, and clashes with a popular girl named Leah. After a therapy session with her father, Tate Langdon stopped by the bathroom and saw Violet cutting herself. They instantly bonded over their issues with their families, their music taste, and how they feel like outsiders to the rest of the world. She confides in Tate about her father's affair, and how her mother had a stillbirth sometime before that. She later finds out about the murders Tate committed and is confused with her feelings for him, as she was falling in love with him at the time she made the revelation. She learned a bit about his emotional instability from his mother, and is forced to keep the secret of his sister's death from him. Violet knows that Tate is a ghost. She goes to Westfield High, Tate's old school, where she later learns he committed a mass shooting in the mid-90's.

Violet learned that she could control the ghosts in the house as she had, as Tate explained, "evolved." He told her that if she ever wanted a ghost to leave her alone, she simply needed to tell them to "go away." In reality, Violet had unknowingly died when she overdosed on sleeping pills following the revelation that Tate was a ghost and a mass murderer. Tate had hidden Violet's body in a crawl space beneath the house, where it was discovered by a an exterminator, who Tate had subsequently killed to prevent Violet or her family from learning that she wasn't all there.^[3]

Meanwhile, Tate overheard Violet's father planning to send her away, and suggested that Violet take a multitude of pills so she could 'die' and be with Tate forever. (She did not know she was already dead at this point.) She starts to agree, but then runs away screaming for her parents and attempting to leave the house. However, each time she exits a door, she comes right back into the house through a different door. Violet is very confused, and Tate tells her that he needs to show her something, and leads her into the crawl space beneath her house where her body was being hidden. When she comes to the realization that she is dead, she is overcome with sadness, and Tate says that she died crying, but that she was loved and safe.

Violet found out that Tate killed both Chad and Patrick and raped her mother, and she immediately confronted him. She told him that despite her love for him she couldn't be with him anymore. She claimed that she used to believe he was like her, and attracted to the darkness, but in actuality he was the darkness itself. He told her that she was all he wanted and all that he had, but she continually told him to go away. After their tearful breakup, she is comforted by her mother's ghost.^[4]

After Violet's father dies, Violet, along with both of her parents and her baby brother, continue as ghosts, "living" happily in the Murder House and preventing any further deaths from occurring inside the house. Violet, along with her parents, Jeffery, and Moira, are happily celebrating Christmas when Violet sees Tate watching her, and her smile falters. Tate then goes on to tell Hayden, who was also banished by the Harmons, that he will wait forever for Violet to forgive him if he has to.

Quotes

To self: "So we're the Addams family now?"
To Tate Langdon: "Wanna listen to Morrissey? He's cool. And he's pissy, and he hates everyone and everything."
^[5]
To Tate Langdon: "I hate it here. I hate everyone. All their bourgeois designer bullshit, the east coast was much cooler. At least we had weather"
To Tate Langdon: "And the worst part is that six months earlier my mom had, like, this brutal miscarriage. The baby was seven months old, we had to have this macabre funeral... Have you ever seen a baby coffin?"
To Ben Harmon and Vivien Harmon: "Fine, I'm depressed. I'm not gonna off myself. So you can go back to your policy of benign neglect."
To Ben Harmon and Vivien Harmon: "I'm pretty stuffed on bullshit."
To Ben Harmon: "Like who I'm gonna live with after you get divorced? Is there a third option, cause both of you kind of make me wanna kill myself."
To Ben Harmon: "You're a cheater! Young girls, old ladies with feather dusters?! You're so weird and pathetic I'm surprised you haven't gone after me."
To Leah: ¨You don't know me. Why are you doing this?¨
To Ben Harmon and Vivien Harmon: ¨Both of you kinda make me want to kill myself¨

Notes

She is the first character to be portrayed by Taissa Farmiga. The second is Zoe Benson.
Violet Harmon has been absent in only one episode throughout the season. That episode is Spooky Little Girl.
According to casting director Eric Dawson, Violet was originally written as a goth girl.
On the Family Portrait website, it appears that she's wearing a wedding dress.