Early Life[]
When Violet Baudelaire was five years old, she won her first invention contest with an automatic rolling pin. She used a window shade and six pairs of roller skates, plus winning her a gold medal and a compliment from the judge, who bet that Violet could invent something with both her hands tied behind her back. Around her tenth birthday, she invented a new kind of pencil sharpener.[1]
Prior to the demise of her parents, she liked to visit the Verne Invention Museum and enjoyed many of its exhibits, including one of the mechanical demonstrations that had inspired her to be an inventor when she was just two years old. In the Bad Beginning, Snicket describes Violet as having pleasant facial features like her siblings. She hates the color pink and finds the color lavender a sickly color, as mentioned in The Wide Window.
Violet portrayed by Emily Browning
Inventions[]
While Klaus is the researcher, Sunny is the biter (and later chef), Violet is the inventor. The theme of children each having a particular ability. For example, with the Quagmire triplets, Duncan is a journalist, Isadora is a poet, and Quigley is a cartographer. The Baudelaires' volatile friend Fiona is a mycologist. Violet is depicted as being extremely skilled at inventing devices. She often invents devices to help herself and her siblings in dangerous situations, using only simple objects such as rubber bands and tin cans. Whenever Violet invents something, she ties her hair up with her ribbon to keep it out of her eyes.
Violet's inventions[]
- In The Bad Beginning, Violet makes a grappling hook, from metal rods and torn clothing.
- In The Reptile Room, she makes a lockpick, from two prongs from an electrical socket, a thumbtack, and some soap.
- In The Wide Window, she makes a signaling device, from a piece of cloth, fishing pole, a metal bucket, and a burning hairnet.
- In The Austere Academy, she makes a staple-making device, using a small crab, a potato, metal rods, creamed spinach, and a fork. She also makes a few pairs of "noisy shoes" by attaching pieces of metal to the soles of normal shoes.
- In The Ersatz Elevator, she makes rope out of extension cords, curtains, and neckties. She also makes welding torches, from heated fire tongs, and crowbars, from bent fire tongs.
- In The Vile Village, she makes a battering ram, using a wooden plank, water, and spongy bread. She also assists Hector in constructing a Self-Sustaining Hot Air Mobile Home using various mechanical devices.
- In The Hostile Hospital, she makes an intercom system, using an empty soup can with a hole. She also made an escape device, from rubber bands.
- In The Carnivorous Carnival, she tries to make a cart as an escape vehicle, using vines, roller coaster parts and a piece of rubber.
- In The Slippery Slope, she makes a drag chute, using hammocks and a mixture of sticky condiments, and a brake, using a wooden table. She also makes climbing shoes using forks, fake fingernails, ukulele strings, and a candelabra.
- In The Penultimate Peril she makes a drag chute out of dirty sheets from the Hotel Denouement.
- In The End, Violet invents a water filter in order to make salt water drinkable. She also makes a sling for her and her siblings to use to carry baby Beatrice.
- In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (video game), Violet invents various things, such as the Smasher, the Lobber, the Lockpick, the Sprayer, the Lever Yanker, the Reptile Retriever, the Brilliant Bopper (Klaus's weapon), the Fruit Flinger (her own weapon), the Baby Booster (which helps Sunny jump), the Steady Stilts (so that Violet can reach high places) and the .