Who is Madeleine Williams from Lost in the City: Stories and what is their importance? Lost_in_the_City English & Literature Madeleine Williams | Lost in the City: Stories

Madeleine Williams is the protagonist in The Sunday Following Mother's Day. The story follows her progression from a six-year-old girl to an adult woman with a child of her own. Madeleine spends the first six years of her life in an apparently normal family situation, living with her older brother Samuel Jr. and her parents, Samuel and Agnes Williams. There is no hint of dysfunction in the family and they appear to be a normal middle-class black family living in an urban center of Washington D.C. When Madeleine is six years old, however, her father murders her mother one night while the children are sleeping. Samuel stabs Agnes repeatedly and then calls his sister, Madeleine's aunt Maddie, and tells her what he has done. Maddie calls the police who arrest Samuel. He does not attempt flight and does not resist arrest. During his trial, he offers no defense and no explanation. Samuel is sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Madeleine and her brother go to live with their aunt Maddie. When Samuel Jr. turns thirteen, he refuses to visit his father in prison, but Madeleine keeps up sporadic visits and communications. Madeleine grows up and at age twenty, takes Curtis Wallace as a lover and about a year later, delivers a son whom she names Samuel.