Wednesday Addams is a fictional character created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. The character has also appeared in television, film, and in video games, in both the live action and animated formats.
In Addams’ cartoons, which first appeared in The New Yorker, Wednesday and other members of the family had no names. When the characters were adapted to the 1964 television series, Charles Addams gave her the name “Wednesday”, based on the well-known nursery rhyme line, “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.” The idea for the name was supplied by the actress and poet Joan Blake, an acquaintance of Addams. She is the sister of Pugsley Addams (and, in the movie Addams Family Values, also the sister of Pubert Addams), and she is the only daughter of Gomez and Morticia Addams. In earlier adaptations she is the younger sister of Pugsley, and in later adaptations she becomes the older one.
Child of woe is wan and delicate…sensitive and on the quiet side, she loves the picnics and outings to the underground caverns…a solemn child, prim in dress and, on the whole, pretty lost…secretive and imaginative, poetic, seems underprivileged and given to occasional tantrums…has six toes on one foot…
— Charles Addams
Wednesday’s most notable features are her pale skin and long, dark braided pigtails. She seldom shows emotion and is generally bitter. Wednesday usually wears a black dress with a white collar, black stockings and black shoes.
In the 1960s series, she is sweet-natured and serves as a foil to the weirdness of her parents and brother, although her favorite hobby is raising spiders; she is also a ballerina. Wednesday’s favorite toy is her Marie Antoinette doll, which her brother guillotines (at her request).
She is stated to be six years old in the television series’ pilot episode. In one episode, she is shown to have several other headless dolls as well. She also paints pictures (including a picture of trees with human heads) and writes a poem dedicated to her favorite pet spider, Homer. Wednesday is deceptively strong; she is able to bring her father down with a judo hold. Wednesday has a close kinship with the family’s giant butler Lurch. In the TV series, her middle name is “Friday”.
In the 1991 film, she is depicted in a darker fashion. She shows sadistic tendencies and a dark personality, and is revealed to have a deep interest in the Bermuda Triangle and an admiration for an ancestor (Great Aunt Calpurnia Addams) who was burned as a witch in 1706. In the 1993 sequel, she was even darker: she buried a live cat, tried to guillotine her baby brother Pubert, set fire to Camp Chippewa and (possibly) scared fellow camper Joel to death. These films were the first version of The Addams Family in which violent or horrific acts could be depicted on-camera rather than implied, which makes Wednesday’s personality difficult to define: in the first film, she is seen to successfully electrify her brother Pugsley in an electric chair, but she and Morticia express no surprise that he is not killed nor even harmed.
In the animated series and Canadian TV series The New Addams Family from the 1990s, Wednesday retains her appearance and her taste for darkness and torture; she is portrayed as having her parents’ consent to tie Pugsley to a chair and torture him with a branding iron and ice pick.
