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Illustrated portrait of Emma Jessup

A character in It Can't Happen Here

Emma Jessup

Emma is Doremus’s wife and the mother of Philip, Mary, and Sissy.

The book

Cover of It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
It Can't Happen HereSinclair Lewis, 1935

An American dictatorship arrives through elections, promises, resentment, and a leader who insists only he can fix the country.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Emma is Doremus’s wife and the mother of Philip, Mary, and Sissy. She is less politically adventurous than Doremus or Lorinda and initially hopes family life can continue around the crisis. The dictatorship, Fowler’s death, Mary’s sacrifice, and Doremus’s arrest destroy that possibility. She survives the main events; the ending does not provide a complete later fate.

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