payment page
Although Minnie Wright never appears in the story, she is nevertheless the third major character. For Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, she is the woman who, despite her physical absence, “had been there with them all through that hour” in the kitchen. She is the only character whose maiden name is known, and in fact Mrs. Hale still thinks of her as Minnie Foster, not as Minnie Wright. This detail suggests that Minnie Foster was one person—a “lively,” pretty girl who liked to sing—while Minnie Wright is another. Her marriage rendered her songless, lonely, and isolated. Only through what other characters say about Minnie can readers know her, and even the characters must infer much of what they think of her. Happy and social as a girl, then married for twenty years to a man Mrs. Hale describes as “a raw wind that gets to the bone,” Minnie changes.
Mrs. Hale compares the young Minnie to a bird, “sweet and pretty,” but “timid and—fluttery.” In the cage of her marriage, her song dies, and when her husband violently destroys the one thing that brought her joy, she kills him. That this act is outside her true nature is revealed in her odd behavior after the fact. She is nervous, fearful, quiet, and possibly in shock. Because Mrs. Hale and, after a while, Mrs. Peters are able to vividly imagine Minnie’s life and connect her losses with their own losses, they achieve the empathy necessary to know that she committed the murder while allowing her the extenuating circumstances that absolve her of guilt. They become her peers and serve as her silent jury. By withholding the evidence that would “make certain” Minnie’s conviction, they buck the law in favor of solidarity with an abused woman.
