Bernadette

Bernadette is Doyle’s deceased wife and Sullivan, Teddy, and Tip’s mother. She has “iron rust hair, dark blue eyes, a long narrow nose” (1). Bernadette has been dead for two weeks at the opening of novel. Throughout her marriage to Doyle she embarks on a “limitless quest for children” (2). She has enough insight that she anticipated the trouble with statue, because she knew that two of her sons would have to be “passed over” for the statue. Bernadette is jocular, treating the statue irreverently when her husband questions its presence in their living room, saying it’s “art” and that he should “Pretend that she’s naked” (4). After her death, Bernadette is idealized by all of her sons and her husband. Sullivan believes that if Bernadette had not died he would not have made the grave mistakes he made, and Teddy comes to associate her with God...