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Mrs. Boyle was the mother of Sally, Elizabeth, and Anne Boyle, and the wife of Mr. Boyle. She is heard in most of Sally's memories in Act II.
Personality[]
Mrs. Boyle is shown to have been a complex woman with conflicting beliefs. In some of Sally's memories, she is shown to hold traditionalist beliefs, believing that women should strive to be desirable wives for men. As a result, she disapproved of Sally's interest in chemistry, claiming that no man would want a woman who's more interested in chemicals than cooking. Despite this, however, she often warned Sally of the 'true nature' of men, claiming that they ultimately only want sex from a woman.
Despite Sally's young age of thirteen, Mrs. Boyle is shown to have constantly tried to push the image of how she expected a woman to act onto Sally, and was frustrated that her daughter was not so "agreeable"; yet when Sally did act in a more traditionally feminine way, Mrs. Boyle would shoot her down as acting too "provocative". It's likely that Mrs. Boyle did care about Sally, but she did not know how to relate to her daughter. Given the era that Mrs. Boyle grew up in, it's not a surprise that she could not understand or accept the idea that her daughter did not want to be a housewife.
Her feelings typically manifested in the form of negative comments towards Sally. She would often berate Sally for being intelligent, which she deemed to be an undesirable trait in a woman, and she immediately blamed Sally and her personality when she was shouted at by some girls at her school. In contrast to her feelings towards Sally, Mrs. Boyle is shown to compensate by acting overly protective towards Anne and Elizabeth, who she considered "delicate flowers".
History[]
Not much is known about Mrs. Boyle's past. Sometime prior to 1934, she married Mr. Boyle. In 1934, she gave birth to Sally, followed by Elizabeth in 1936, and Anne in 1938. She worked as a seamstress.
During the 'Authority Project' in 1947, Mrs. Boyle was distraught at the thought of having her to send away her two youngest daughters. She took the family to see the bodies of the people who tried to burn the registry of children; Mrs. Boyle commented that she wished could be was as brave as they were. The night before Anne and Elizabeth were due to leave, Mrs. Boyle, unable to come to terms with having to let them go, poisoned the family dinner with foxglove seeds, killing herself, her daughters, and her husband. Due to an argument, Sally had left the house prior to eating dinner and was thus the sole survivor of the Boyle family; she wondered if her mother had started the argument intentionally to spare her.
Mrs. Boyle died on the floor of the kitchen floor of the Boyle Residence, with her daughters laying under her arms. The scene was walked in on by Chief Inspector Peters, who was trying to take Sally home to reconcile with her mother.
Trivia[]
- Like her husband, Mrs. Boyle's first name is never revealed.
- In one memory she doubted that Sally would ever be a mother.
- Mrs. Boyle's granddaughter is Gwen Boyle.
- When clipping inside of her model, she doesn't have any eyes; neither does Mr. Boyle.
- It's implied by the Weird Sisters that Sally got her interest in chemistry from her mother's knowledge of herbalism.
- In the memory Sally gets when she visits her old home, the two girls that Mrs. Boyle is holding uses Margaret Worthing's character model.
- The hairstyle she has cannot be found on any other Wellette in Hamlyn Village, though it does show up on the female members of the Jacobean Society, the female statue in Dogberry Park, and Maharajkumari Indira Devi.
Gallery[]
