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, family and/or life:
“Like plowing, housework makes the ground ready for the germination of family life. The kids will not invite a teacher home if beer cans litter the living room. The family isn’t likely to have breakfast together if somebody didn’t remember to buy eggs, milk, or muffins. Housework maintains an orderly setting in which family life can flourish.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“The woman who does her job for society inside the four walls of her home must not be considered by her husband or anyone else an economic “dependent,” reaching out her hands in mendicant fashion for financial help.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described—and will be, after our deaths—by each of the family members who believe they know us.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
—Bible: New Testament, Ephesians 4:1-3.