importance of Mabel Skinner

Mabel Skinner is the wife of Dr. Skinner and mother of Chrissie. Grace describes Mabel as being “capitulating” (294) when she tells William why Chrissie was sent to the convent. The reader, however, knows that Chrissie’s mother spoke out against her husband’s decision to make Chrissie give up her baby. When she learns that he plans for Chrissie to give up her baby, she tells him that the only way she will allow the baby to be given up for adoption is over her dead body. Her words to him are a foreshadowing because she receives a fatal injury when she is hit by a car in the blackout the day she spoke them. Dr. Skinner does not tell his daughter about her mother’s death because he is afraid she will get back together with Billy if she comes home for the funeral.