Home and Family Life
Mrs. Fletcher lived at 698 Candlewood Lane in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine 03041. While teaching criminology at Manhattan University, she stayed in Manhattan at the Penfield House Apartments, 941 West 61st St. Cabot Cove is a town of 3,560 inhabitants near the ocean. Based on the number of murders that occur in a given season of the show, the town seems to have probably one of the highest murder ratio of any town or city. This has even been remarked in the show by the town Sheriff Mort Metzger. He noted in Season 5, Episode 21 (Mirror Mirror On the Wall Part 1) that this was his fifth murder in one year. Given the population of the town to be about 3000 this is a fairly high murder rate. Given the murder rate in this town, it has about the same murder rate of a town 20 times its size. This trend was noted and parodied many times.
Her travels as an author very frequently took her to places around much of the English-speaking world, which gave her writers a little more ability to stretch the character and her situations than rural New England alone would have provided. One of them took her to Hawaii, where she shared a case with private detective Thomas Magnum, star of Magnum PI.
Mrs. Fletcher was widowed from her beloved husband Frank, with no children but with a seemingly endless collection of nephews, nieces, cousins, in-laws and other relatives or friends who always needed her help. Especially prone to get into trouble was her nephew Grady Fletcher, who was raised for a period of time by Jessica and Frank. Grady always seemed to meet the wrong girl, until he finally married Donna several seasons into the show.
Read more about this topic: Jessica Fletcher
Famous quotes containing the words family life, home and, home, family and/or life:
“Family life is not a computer program that runs on its own; it needs continual input from everyone.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“... married women work and neglect their children because the duties of the homemaker become so depreciated that women feel compelled to take a job in order to hold the respect of the community. It is one thing if women work, as many of them must, to help support the family. It is quite another thingit is destructive of womans freedomif society forces her out of the home and into the labor market in order that she may respect herself and gain the respect of others.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (18871970)
“The ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“If we can find a principle to guide us in the handling of the child between nine and eighteen months, we can see that we need to allow enough opportunity for handling and investigation of objects to further intellectual development and just enough restriction required for family harmony and for the safety of the child.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshiper and the worshiper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.”
—George Bernard Shaw (18561950)