Mrs. Burridge
Mrs. Burridge is fifty-one years old and sits in her kitchen writing out a grocery shopping list. She is tired from having spent much of the day jarring pickled green tomatoes while fretting over the news she heard at the store that a strike at the factory that manufactures the glass jars will likely soon create a shortage of supply. From the opening sentences of the story, it becomes immediately clear that Mrs. Burridge is a catastrophist always on edge and anxious over a looming disaster.
She lives with her husband on a farm isolated from others around her. Inside the house, she is also isolated from her husband on whom she has grown dependent, but for whom she feels no passion. Since the children have grown up and moved away, her life has become even more isolated and disconnected. The emotional alienation from her husband has begun to create a kind of madness due to her obviously well-constructed imagination having no creative outlet. Instead, she has recreated herself as a character in an imagined doomsday scenario playing out only inside her feverish mind.
Frank Burridge
Frank is Mrs. Burridge’s husband and what little is known about him is conveyed through the perspective of his wife. He works hard and makes good money, but is emotionally distant. The jars of green tomato pickles will get eaten by Frank alone even though he is the type to grumble that she fills way too many jars for just the two of them.
He’s put on a layer of fat around the middle; a spare tire as she likes to call it. He is the type of husband who saves up all his conversation for the dinner table. And even then, the conversation is hardly animated or inspiring. Frank is a good provider and she has been able to depend upon him for everything, but his stubbornness drives her as crazy as his predictability.
