The consensus here seems to be that the hunter is the real villain here, but that's entirely wrong. The man who decided to pimp out not one, but two daughters, under false pretenses no less to a him for money is the real personification of evil in this film. Especially when he's caught lying and misrepresenting the first, he encourages the second daughter to commit a capital crime to help save him from his prior mistakes and even provides her with the items necessary to make it happen. It's a tragedy of missed opportunities from start to finish. At any step along the way, a decision to be honorable instead of choosing the path of deceit, and all the pain and suffered endured along the way could have been avoided, apart from maybe the eldest daughter's mistake, made before the start of the film, which led her father down a dark path that even he couldn't have predicted.