Miss Strangeworth mainly reveals she is evil through the anonymous, poison pen letters she sends to her small town neighbors. They are filled with cruel statements and false insinuations. For instance, she writes in all caps to Helen Crane, who recently confided worries about her daughter:

DIDN'T YOU EVER SEE AN IDIOT CHILD BEFORE? SOME PEOPLE JUST SHOULDN'T HAVE CHILDREN SHOULD THEY?

These letters leave people in the town feeling worried and "grim":

Many people seemed disturbed recently, Miss Strangeworth thought.

Miss Strangeworth compounds her evil by being two-faced and hypocritical. She pretends to be kind and thoughtful. People confide in her because she seems sympathetic. Nobody suspects that she could possibly be the one sending the hateful, damaging letters.

Miss Strangeworth is evil, too, because her moral values are misplaced. She puts more emphasis on appearances than on compassion. For example, she is inordinately proud of her beautiful roses, and the beauty of her garden makes her feel superior to her neighbors. She also will rewrite her poison pen letters if the spacing is incorrect or she makes a mistake, because of the pride she takes in her neatness. She is an example of what the Bible describes as a person who is like a cup that is clean on the outside and dirty on the inside.

Finally, Miss Strangeworth is evil because she is blind to herself. Much of her evil comes from this flaw: she is obviously projecting onto others her own fears and vices because she can't stand the idea she is less than perfect or not superior to other people. A person who thinks they are holier than everyone else and can do no wrong is a dangerous soul who can do a great deal of damage.

One could reasonably argue that the poison pen letters that Miss Strangeworth writes are not just nasty and mean-spirited, but downright evil in that they are designed to sow suspicion and set people at each other's throats.

Though Miss Strangeworth claims to be concerned with protecting the moral climate of the town, in actual fact, she constitutes its biggest threat. Far from encouraging people to live together in harmony, she actively seeks to create division, dissension, and mutual suspicion. By most people's standards, this would be regarded as evil.

A prime example of Miss Strangeworth's evil comes in the letter she writes to Mrs. Harper. In this poison-tipped epistle, she intimates that Mr. Harper is having an affair and that all of Mrs. Harper's friends are laughing at her behind her back.

If Miss Strangeworth really were concerned with the moral climate of the town, then she wouldn't write such letters. There's nothing remotely good about attacking someone who's on the wrong end of adultery. After all, Mrs. Harper hasn't done anything wrong here, so why should she be the one to be insulted in this way?

Here, as elsewhere, Miss Strangeworth's behavior is completely gratuitous. There's simply no need for her to write such an appalling letter....