The Characters
In At Weddings and Wakes, McDermott filters what is known and discovered through the minds of the Towne-Daily children, most often through a composite consciousness that seems to mesh with the point of view of the author. Sometimes a particular child is chosen as a focal point, and readers are thus able to distinguish between the boy, for example, and his sisters. Robert, well-behaved and introverted, is an exemplary altar boy who rises in the mornings in time to attend early mass. He is a good boy, the priest says, prompt, courteous, with pressed cassock and shined shoes. When his sister Margaret decides to emulate his behavior and go to early mass herself, Robert is glad for her company and seems pleased to point out to her things that give him pleasure—pinkish clouds left in the sky, a last star, a hedge filled with sparrows in the morning dew. Try as she might, however, Margaret is unable to match her brother’s generosity and selflessness. The gladioli that she finds in the cemetery and identifies as her own treasure, separate from her brother’s, have to be a special gift, the child thinks, perhaps an offering to her teacher, Miss Joan. The flowers, the child thinks, would transform the teacher from ugly duckling to blushing bride gliding across a dance floor in the arms of a new husband. Margaret’s joy turns to shame and humiliation, however, when Miss Joan spurns the flowers, which came from the dirt of a freshly dug grave.
Maryanne has a similar experience with a teacher, Sister Miriam Joseph, who, unlike Miss Joan, is tall, dark, and beautiful. Filled with love for Sister Miriam Joseph and trying to impress her, Maryanne tells her teacher about Aunt May, who died four days after her marriage and who had once been a nun. What happened to Aunt May becomes a sign of foreboding for Sister Miriam Joseph, and she dismisses Maryanne, relegating her back to the group, indistinguishable from the other children. In her mouth, the nun holds gum that replaces saliva caused by an illness that will, before long, kill her.
The particular point of view chosen by the author provides the magical aura that pervades the text. Entrance into the minds of the children and incidents surrounding the children not only help define their individual characters but also act to reinforce themes and images. These occur and recur until a reader becomes aware that beside every birth is a death, beside every child is an adult facing perhaps an early knowledge of death, and behind every wedding is a wake.
Since the view of every character and situation is somewhat skewed by its refraction in the consciousness of the children, every character and situation seems transformed from the usual to the unique, from the spiritless and timid to the heroic, from the commonplace to the incredible. For example, Bob Dailey, who is the subject of his wife’s complaints when she is within the bosom of her family, is in the children’s eyes hero and benefactor, the driver of the automobile that carries them home and to and from their annual vacations. Rather than being made angry by the constant complaints of the women of the Towne family, Bob understands that his wife’s family provides for him the routine of daily life, the constant recognition that beneath all who are alive is an undercurrent of the lives of the dead.
Characters Discussed
Robert Dailey
Robert Dailey,
Margaret Dailey
Margaret Dailey, and
Maryanne Dailey
Maryanne Dailey, children who are the focus of the narration. Robert,...
(This entire section contains 561 words.)
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at age twelve, is the oldest. An altar boy, he is well groomed, polite, unselfish, and studious. Margaret, the middle child, identifies more readily with Maryanne. Neither has aspirations to be a nun matching Robert’s goal of becoming a priest. Both look up to Robert and try to emulate his behavior. The children are presented more forcefully as a group than as individuals.
Lucy Towne Dailey
Lucy Towne Dailey, the children’s mother. She makes twice-weekly trips to Brooklyn to visit her stepmother and sisters, and she spends most of her time complaining about her husband. For about twenty years, she is the only one of the four sisters to be married. She seems never to have broken the ties with her family sufficiently to allow a happy marriage.
Bob Dailey
Bob Dailey, Lucy’s husband and the children’s father. He tries to provide the family with at least two weeks of something different from the trips to Brooklyn. A patient man, he does not object to his wife’s constant visits “home.” He has come to like the Towne women, and he willingly helps them with such matters as taxes and insurance.
Momma Towne
Momma Towne, Lucy’s stepmother, who married Lucy’s father after the death of Lucy’s mother following the birth of Veronica. As a seventeen-year-old recent immigrant from Ireland, she learned quickly how to be a mother to children who missed their birth mother and how to be a wife to a contentious widowed husband. A beautiful woman in her old age, she rules the homes of her daughters and remains the central figure in their lives.
May Towne
May Towne, one of Lucy’s three sisters, a former nun who left the nunnery because she had come to love her life as a nun so much that she could not consider her duties as a sacrifice. Enamored of Lucy’s children, she takes them for walks and always has little treats or gifts for them. Her wedding and her wake are the major actions in the novel.
Agnes Towne
Agnes Towne, another sister, a successful businesswoman with cultivated tastes for music and the arts, for decor, and for personal style. She chooses the church outside their parish for May’s wedding because it would make a better setting. Agnes also is in charge of the reception and other social functions.
Veronica Towne
Veronica Towne, the fourth sister, an “unfortunate” one whose facial lesions were mistreated in her youth, causing a worsening of the problem. After her first and only job (secured by Agnes) is terminated, she becomes a kind of hermit, closed up in her room until she comes out for cocktails and dinner. Her solitary drinking is tolerated by Momma Towne.
David Towne
David Towne, Momma’s only birth child, was spoiled in his youth and later summarily dismissed by his mother, whose iron will keeps him away from her home except for brief visits at Christmas. The Dailey children meet David’s wife and two children for the first time at May’s wedding.
Fred
Fred, a middle-aged mail carrier who finds May in her middle age and marries her, only to lose her four days after the wedding.
