Grace Windsor (Windkloppel) Wexler Character Analysis

The snobby, social-climbing Grace Wexler is the wife of Jake Wexler and the mother of Turtle and Angela. She’s one of Sam Westing’s 16 potential heirs. A self-proclaimed heiress with a passion for interior design—and a penchant for bigotry and self-absorption to the point of narcissism—Grace is, at the start of the novel, trying desperately to outrun her humble origins and disguise herself as a moneyed, mannered socialite. Grace claims to be related to Sam Westing, though she is purposefully vague about their connection and continues to disguise her maiden name (Windkloppel, which is also Sam Westing’s original family name) from the other heirs. Grace is paired with James Shin Hoo in the Westing game, and though the two of them have trouble seeing eye to eye—largely due to Grace’s racism—Grace eventually comes to understand the complexity of her game partner’s experiences and helps him revive and reinvigorate his floundering restaurant business. Grace is obsessed with appearances—as such, she encourages Angela to marry the successful plastic surgery intern Dr. Denton Deere without even considering whether the teenaged Angela is prepared to marry so young. Over the course of the novel, Grace slowly learns how skewed her priorities have been and how cruelly she’s treated not just her neighbors but her own family. By discounting her husband’s profession, pressuring her eldest daughter into marriage, and constantly berating her youngest daughter Turtle for her offbeat tomboyish-ness, Grace has alienated herself from those she loves most. In playing the Westing game, she learns to see not just the strangers who are her fellow players but her own family members as complex people with agency of their own.