Elly Henderson in Mercy Among the Children

Elly McGowan Henderson, one of main characters in the novel " Mercy among the children" written by David Adams Richards. Elly was built as the most beautiful lady in this novel as " her skin was pale, her eyes soft blue, her hair auburn that fell like cinnamon ringlets about her ears, while her smile when it came lightened man's burden" (Richards 46). She was sent to a orphanage when she was a baby, and adopted by Gordon Brown, who has eight children lives with poverty. She had heard about that she has two siblings adopted by other families in other place, but she never meet them and never stopped looking for her siblings and her mom and dad. When she was sixteen, she left school in her second year in grade eight and started working to make a living. In her life, she had read three books, and her favorite book of these three was The Adventures of Huckleberry as what her son, Lyle Henderson mentioned it later on.

Elly has a complicated relationships with other characters except her family. She always loves and takes care of her family which she is Sydney Henderson's wife and mother of Lyle, Autumn and Percy. Diedre Whyne is Elly's favorite girlfriend, she always feels that she has a duty to protect Elly because Elly was so beautiful. She forced her thoughts upon Elly, which she thinks if Elly married with Sydney is same as she ruins her life. The relationship between Diedre and Elly comes to a deadlock after Elly refused to Diedre's suggestion that leave from Sydney and Diedre kept trying to break Elly's marriage and take her children away for a long time. In the almost end of this novel, it's a surprise that Diedre is actually one of the sisters of Elly. This truth was discovered by Elly's another sister, Isabel Young, a lawyer who was thin with dark hair and saved Elly's family from a terrible situation. She brought a lot news about Sydney's background to Elly that Elly did not know any of them. For example, the laceration on Sydney's stomach was from a shot by a 22-calibre 410-gauge over-and-under rifle when Sydney was twelve. Also, she found out that all three of them are Leo McVicer's children. Leo McVicer, who is the richest man in the region. Elly worked in Leo's "drab masculine three-storey brick house out on the bay, with its yard filled with alders and gardens and secrets alcoves"(Richards 66) and also accused of robbery - missing five hundred dollars after Elly worked in that house. He treat her as a friend before the robbery which causes he lost trust in her, no one knows if he recognized that Elly is one of his daughter by her middle name, McGowan, the name Leo gave her because it was his mother's maiden name. Elly also has relationships with others but most of them were built on her beauty. For example, Mathew Pit, who wants to date with Elly only in sexual way. He is jealous of Sydney, and tries to get anything he wants by any artifices and blame them all on Sydney. Rudy Bellanger is another character who is infatuated with Elly. Elly has a sexual accusation because she went to Polly's Restaurant for lunch with Rudy without understanding what is Rudy real means. David Scone, a divorced professor who had showed interest in Elly. Diedre tried to convince Elly that David is better than Sydney, but this plan had failed.

Considering to all aspects of Elly, Elly is a character who afraid of struggle with her life as believing in miracles. Since she was young, "she had many rituals to keep herself safe, because she felt anyone could come and take her away, and felt also that anyone had power to do that they wanted with her life (Richards 25). Her experience makes her nervous about being taken away. When her family involved in problems, she wants to stand for her family, but do not believe she has enough power to struggle with problems and chooses to keep silence. She follows Sydneys's thought as what Sydney told her before they get married: "There is a second group, the group that you