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John
First introduced in scenario B, Madge is the woman John is seeing on the side instead of Mary. While ostensibly a different character than Mary, Atwood implies that the two characters are so similar that they are able to be swapped into one another’s stories with only slight changes. In scenario C, after her husband John commits suicide, Madge marries a man named Fred and things continue on as in scenario A. In scenario D, Madge and Fred must deal with a tidal wave disrupting their typical happy ending. In scenario E, Atwood further complicates the ending by introducing elements such as cancer and heart disease. Throughout the various iterations of her story, Madge is presented as another two-dimensional stock character, virtually indistinguishable from Mary.
Madge Quotes in Happy Endings
The Happy Endings quotes below are all either spoken by Madge or refer to Madge. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Happy Endings
Quotes
John tells Mary how important she is to him, but of course he can’t leave his wife because a commitment is a commitment. He goes on about this more than is necessary and Mary finds it boring, but older men can keep it up longer so on the whole she has a fairly good time.
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Yes, but Fred has a bad heart. The rest of the story is about how kind and understanding they both are until Fred dies. Then Madge devotes herself to charity work until the end of A. If you like, it can be “Madge,” “cancer,” “guilty and confused,” and “bird watching.”
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Get the entire Happy Endings LitChart as a printable PDF.
Madge Quotes in Happy Endings
The Happy Endings quotes below are all either spoken by Madge or refer to Madge. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Happy Endings
Quotes
John tells Mary how important she is to him, but of course he can’t leave his wife because a commitment is a commitment. He goes on about this more than is necessary and Mary finds it boring, but older men can keep it up longer so on the whole she has a fairly good time.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Yes, but Fred has a bad heart. The rest of the story is about how kind and understanding they both are until Fred dies. Then Madge devotes herself to charity work until the end of A. If you like, it can be “Madge,” “cancer,” “guilty and confused,” and “bird watching.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
