Jason Compson, the ultimate villain of American literature?

Jason Compson, from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, certainly is the villain of the story.  Growing up, he told on his siblings at every chance for no better reason than to spite them, and as an adult he was a horror.  He was going to whip his niece for ditching school with his belt, and was going to whip Dilsey for trying to stop him.  He only decide to not whip them after he heard his mother coming down the stairs to see what the noise was about.  Calling Jason a villain is no real stretch of the imagination, but is he an arch-villain, the most sinister character in all of American Literature?  I won't go so far as to say that. 

There are few characters deserving the foul language required to describe Jason, but I cannot see him as the absolute worst.  Count Olaf from the Series of Unfortunate Events is more monstrous in his deeds than Jason's.  It is true that Jason blackmails Caddy for guardianship of Quentin in order to pocket the child support money for himself, a similar tactic to the infamous Count, but Jason wasn't intending to kill Quentin after he got what he wanted.

Jason stands on the villain scale close to Curley from Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck.  Both characters are abusive to the people under them whenever they can get away with it, liking to physically beat anyone who makes them angry or gets in their way.  Both are also favorites of the character in authority, Curley to his father the superintendent of the ranch, and Jason to his mother.  They may be grade A bastards, but they do have a check on their power.  For Jason, that is his mother.  Jason doesn't want to upset her, for fear of weakening her health or perhaps for fear of being turned away from the role as her favorite.  He is only stopped from whipping Dilsey and Quentin by his the sound of his mother coming down the stairs, especially after she had told him to not lose his temper with Quentin.

Jason is a villain, one of the most despicable ever written, but because he is not as cruel as some and because he has a potent foil of his mother, he is not the ultimate villain of American literature.