The unnamed narrator finds her new marriage haunted by the memory of her husband’s first wife, the beautiful and accomplished Rebecca. Du Maurier masterfully renders envy as a psychological haunting, where the second wife’s insecurity festers into a consuming obsession.
Her envy isn’t directed at a living rival but at an idealized phantom, whose lingering presence in the grand estate of Manderley corrodes the narrator’s identity and threatens to dismantle her sanity and her marriage.
In this seminal psychological thriller, Tom Ripley’s envy of the wealthy, carefree Dickie Greenleaf transcends mere longing. Ripley’s admiration curdles into a desire not just to have what Dickie has, but to be who he is.
Highsmith implicates the reader in Ripley’s chillingly logical progression from covetousness to identity theft and murder, exploring how envy can be a force powerful enough to dissolve one person’s self and reconstruct it in the image of another.
Set against the backdrop of a New England boarding school during World War II, this novel examines the insidious nature of adolescent envy. The narrator, Gene, harbors a deep, unspoken resentment of his best friend Finny’s effortless grace, athletic superiority, and innate charisma.
Knowles demonstrates how envy can fester beneath the surface of even the closest friendships, acting as a quiet catalyst for betrayal and tragedy, ultimately revealing the devastating consequences of a rivalry that only one of the participants was aware of.
This sprawling family saga offers a raw, biblical exploration of sibling rivalry and the demand for paternal love. Echoing the story of Cain and Abel, the novel centers on Cal Trask’s agonizing envy of his brother Aron, who is naturally good and easily wins the affection of their father.
Steinbeck uses Cal’s jealousy to dissect the devastating consequences of perceived parental rejection, showing how this foundational envy can shape a life, drive acts of cruelty, and become a generational curse.
Oscar Wilde’s novel presents a uniquely narcissistic form of envy. After being captivated by his own perfect likeness in a portrait, Dorian Gray becomes fatally envious of its ability to remain eternally young and beautiful while he is destined to age.
This envy of his own static image fuels a hedonistic life of moral decay, as the painting itself absorbs the ugliness of his sins. The novel serves as a dark fable on how vanity and the envy of unattainable perfection can corrupt the soul.
This novel, the first in the Neapolitan Quartet, meticulously charts the complex, lifelong friendship between Elena and Lila, a bond defined as much by fierce loyalty as by relentless intellectual and social competition. Elena’s narration is saturated with a painful envy of Lila’s innate, untamed brilliance.
Ferrante portrays this envy not simply as a destructive force, but as a complex engine of ambition, shaping Elena’s life choices and driving her to achieve things she might not have otherwise, even as it creates fractures in their relationship.
At an elite New England college, narrator Richard Papen desperately envies a small, exclusive group of classics students for their perceived sophistication, intellectual superiority, and charismatic bond. Once he penetrates their inner circle, he discovers it is a hotbed of festering jealousies, intellectual snobbery, and moral rot.
Tartt brilliantly uses Richard’s initial envy to draw the reader into a world where academic and social rivalries escalate into paranoia and violence, exposing the corruption that can lie beneath an alluring intellectual facade.
Thackeray’s masterpiece is propelled by the relentless social ambition of its anti-heroine, Becky Sharp. An orphan with intelligence and charm but no fortune, Becky is defined by her sharp, calculating envy of the wealthy and titled. Her every action is a maneuver designed to acquire the status and security she covets.
Thackeray uses Becky’s journey to satirize a society obsessed with class, illustrating how an envy-fueled ambition can be both a powerful tool for advancement and a hollow pursuit that sacrifices genuine connection.
Pip’s journey from a humble blacksmith’s apprentice to a London gentleman is ignited by class-based envy. His first encounter with the strange, decaying grandeur of Miss Havisham and the beautiful, cruel Estella instills in him a deep shame for his “coarse” origins.
This yearning for social elevation becomes the driving force of his life, leading him to scorn the very people who offered him unconditional love. Dickens expertly charts how envy can distort one’s values and prove to be a poor foundation for a happy life.
Jay Gatsby’s immense wealth and extravagant parties are all constructed for a single purpose: to win Daisy Buchanan. His ambition is fueled by a profound envy of Daisy's husband, Tom, a man of old money who possesses the one thing Gatsby cannot buy—an innate, unshakable place in the social elite.
Gatsby envies Tom’s history with Daisy and his effortless social standing. Fitzgerald portrays this envy as the tragic flaw at the heart of Gatsby’s American Dream, showing how a past built on longing can never be truly reclaimed.
Set in the glittering, ephemeral world of New York City’s elite, this novel updates the Ripley narrative for the Instagram age. Louise, a struggling writer, becomes enthralled by the glamorous, wealthy, and hedonistic Lavinia.
Her initial admiration quickly sours into a toxic envy that escalates from imitation to obsession and, ultimately, to a dark and irreversible act. Burton captures the intensity of modern envy, magnified by social media, where curated lives can provoke a dangerous desire to take what isn’t yours.
This historical novel frames the infamous Tudor love triangle through the lens of intense sibling rivalry. Sisters Anne and Mary Boleyn are pitted against each other in a high-stakes competition for the affection of King Henry VIII.
The narrative powerfully depicts how courtly ambition and romantic desire ignite a corrosive envy between them, turning sisterly affection into bitter resentment. Gregory shows how envy, when combined with immense political power, can become a lethal force that fractures family and alters the course of history.
In this sharp literary thriller, envy is the central motivation. Florence Darrow, a low-level publishing assistant with grand literary ambitions, bitterly envies the success of pseudonymous bestselling author Maud Dixon.
When she gets the chance to become Maud’s assistant, her professional jealousy spirals into a dangerous obsession with her employer’s life and identity.
Andrews skillfully uses the theme of creative envy to fuel a suspenseful plot of deception and shifting identities, exploring the desperate lengths one might go to in order to claim another’s success.
This play presents one of literature’s most searing portraits of professional envy. Antonio Salieri, the competent and devout court composer to the Austrian Emperor, is tortured by the arrival of the vulgar, childish Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a man who possesses a divine, effortless genius that Salieri covets.
Salieri's envy is not for wealth but for God-given talent itself. This agonizing jealousy transforms his piety into a declaration of war against God, as he dedicates his life to destroying the vessel of the divine music he so hopelessly adores.