# Mrs. Kennedy — Diverging Roads character guide

> Mrs. Kennedy in Diverging Roads by Rose Wilder Lane.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0001-diverging-roads

## Snapshot

Bert Kennedy's wife, adrift in a San Francisco apartment, learning that marriage has rules she cannot quite obey and mornings she cannot fill.

## Who they are

Mrs. Kennedy is a woman who has drawn hard generalities from two years of marriage — that men want beauty, docility, and no questions — and who stands at her window twisting a shade cord, wondering what to do with the part of her life her husband does not want. She adores Bert blindly and dares not open her eyes, yet she cannot make herself content with idleness. Her quiet crisis of selfhood, and her fear of the ringing doorbell, make her a mirror of the novel's larger question about women's lives beyond the roles assigned to them.

## In the story

### [XII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/diverging_roads_se/chapters/xii)

Not directly present, but Helen is referred to as Mrs. Kennedy in the context of her marriage to Bert.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/diverging_roads_se/characters/mrs_kennedy
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/diverging_roads_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/diverging_roads_se/characters