"Stop wasting your life sitting around not doing cocaine!"
— Hetty to Sam, He Sees Dead People
Henrietta "Hetty" Woodstone[4] is the ghost of a high status robber baroness and the ancestor of Samantha Arondekar. She appears in the American sitcom Ghosts.
Biography[]
History[]
Hetty was born in 1850. Her father was Samuel Woodstone, an emotionally neglectful industrialist who had her mother involuntarily committed to a mental asylum with "hysteria" by 1875.[5] She had a sister named Margaret and several cousins.
Hetty lived in the Woodstone Mansion since she was a young child. At that age, she could see Thorfinn, who sang her to sleep every night, but she called him "Gordon" as she couldn't pronounce his actual name. This memory stayed with her as she grew older, but Thorfinn became hazier as she outgrew her ability to see ghosts. However, her difficulty with falling asleep didn't go away.[6]
In 1875, Hetty had a relationship with an artist who painted a portrait of her showing one of her ankles. The two planned to run away and get married, but she ended the relationship after her father got ahold of the painting, berating her for considering it pornographic, and threatened to cut her from her inheritance.[7]
Hetty married her cousin Elias Woodstone on June 3,[8] underneath a tree on the property.[9] The couple received the house as part of her dowry.[10] The arrangement was made because her father wanted to close a land deal, despite Hetty's dislike of Elias. Elias agreed to marry Hetty because she was prettier than Margaret, who had a mustache. The marriage wasn't happy as Elias had numerous affairs and implicitly left Hetty unsatisfied, while she did everything for her husband and put her own needs second.[11] They had at least one son together, Thomas, who maintained the Woodstone name until Sophie died generations later in 2021.
Hetty let tutors and servants raise her children and missed being part of their lives. She admits she was not the best mother. After her death she watched her kids become adults, unable to help and guide them.[12]
As a rich wife she attended many parties and met other socialites of her time. She was at Mamie Fish's cotillion and had a dispute with her over who had the most comely ankles.[13] She also met Mrs. Astor[14] and a member of the Vanderbilt family once.[15] One time, she overindulged in cocaine at a party and trapped someone in a corner while talking about Gilbert and Sullivan.[16] She also used morphine, to which she attributed her death until she confessed the real reason in the episode Holes Are Bad, and snake oil.[17]
Even though Hetty has voiced her opinion that women shouldn't manage money, she has been implied many times to have managed her husband's industries on his behalf or absence, and to have been as cruel and vindictive as a boss as him. According to Sasappis she once packed twelve steamer trunks for a week in Newport, one of which crushed a footman who eventually died.[18] Hetty herself recalled amused that a worker's finger was found in a sausage once. Another time, a child died working in her factories and she consoled the parents telling them that there was a new opening for their second child. She only considers employing children younger than 7 to be off limits.[19]
A short time before her death, she traveled to Michigan, and still regards anything further west as exotic. She also has an unfulfilled dream of going to Paris and doing many things there that she could not while alive.[20]
Death[]
Hetty died in 1895, shortly after her husband went missing and left her responsible for all of his debts and crimes, including employing children of school age. When the police were closing in on her, she barricaded and strangled herself with the telephone cord. She felt she had no other choice if she wanted Thomas to receive his inheritance and get the best life even if she wasn't around. She felt guilty but had no one to reach out to, as she didn't even know she could make calls with the telephone instead of just receiving them.[21]
Afterlife[]
She has thought about Isaac romantically in Thorapy. Hetty says that they have been friends for about 130 years. Isaac comes out to her which she accepts telling him that they will always be friends.
She was shocked and concerned when Sam fell down the stairs and called Trevor a murderer, believing that he had pushed her.[22]
Hetty possesses Jay Arondekar in the episode Possession. She gives the wedding planner a different menu that Jay didn't have in mind. She uses the opportunity in a human body to eat anything she wants (she enjoys cheetos) then attempts to leave for Paris, but bounces off the ghost barrier putting an end to the possession.
At first, Trevor is Hetty's least favorite housemate. She excludes him from a dinner party (Dinner Party) and admits to the other ghosts that it is because of his lack of pants. Later they begin a friends with benefits situation (The Christmas Spirit), which leads to them hiding their relationship from the other ghosts. In Isaac's Book Nancy and Nigel Chessum discovers Hetty and Trevor engaging in "amorous congress". Later Nigel attempts to blackmail the couple into giving him Trevor's room in Alberta's Descendant, which backfires and results in Hetty and Trevor admitting their relationship to the other ghosts, establishing themselves as a couple. After dating publicly for a short while, at the end of Woodstone's Hottest Couple Hetty and Trevor "break up" in front of the other ghosts, but they continue their liaisons in private. In “Man of Your Dreams” Trevor break ups with Hetty after learning that Hetty hits on Thor (mistakenly believing all of Thor's love interests “sucked off”), he feels she being disrespectful to him and Thor. In “It's the End of the World as We Know It and What Were We Talking About?” he and Hetty competed to keep each other off the guest list. After the grand opening, they admitted to each other that they enjoyed their “battle of wits” and missed the friendship they shared before their relationship. Hetty apologized for the way their relationship ended and proposed an alliance with “the ultimate goal of ruling the house" as “Power Friends”.
As a ghost, she saw her son Thomas kill Alberta and knew that he was in a relationship with Earl Boudreaux, but kept silent until she was compelled to confess in the episode The Heir, because she couldn't allow Alberta to wrongly believe that her sister Theresa had murdered her. She is found guilty by the ghost court and sentenced to banishment into the woods for one year before Alberta forgives her. However, she has to give Alberta her room and will have to share a room with Flower. She had the new room to herself while Flower was stuck in the well.
Ghost Power[]
On St. Patrick's Day, Hetty, now embracing her Irish heritage, found her spectral form could be seen and heard by the living, a power unlocked by her acceptance, though she remained intangible. This manifestation, a fleeting echo of her true self, was a gift born of long-denied roots.
Appearance[]
Hetty has auburn hair and pointed features. Her outfit consists of a dark teal flouncy skirt over the bustle, over skirt drapery, a Victorian high neck bodice with black detailing which she initially used to hide the telephone cord around her neck and no gloves. She is still shown wearing her wedding ring.
Personality[]
Due to her era and upbringing, Hetty holds outdated and conservative views that often conflict with Sam's modern-day, progressive views. She isn't impressed that Sam is a feminist as shown in various episodes. For example, she finds Sam and Jay's "dynamic" to be "grotesque", when she sees Sam working and Jay cooking in Possession. She also doesn't like that Sam can drive. In the episode Viking Funeral, she is against women going to college.
Other common targets of Hetty's vocal dislike are employees, moreso if they unionize, and the Irish. Her former maid Molly, who is Irish, calls her a cruel and vindictive boss, which Hetty takes as a compliment.[23]
Hetty believes that women should have each other's backs, but doesn't think that women should have the right to vote. She "won't get into the whos and whys but it has something to do with over-taxing the female brain" as said in Viking Funeral. In the episode Ghostwriter, she doesn't support women handling money or riding bicycles.
She talks about kids in school being a waste in The Perfect Assistant.
She does not forgive easily as shown in Weekend From Hell, and didn't want to see her husband happy due to the abuse he put her through. Isaac says that she's not a fan of little kids.
Hetty says that she's not a people person, nor "goes with the flow" in Trevor's Pants.
Nevertheless, thanks to the influence of Sam and others, she has shown signs of ameliorating with time in her treatment of others, along with paradoxically learning to stand up for herself, to the expressed dismay of her husband Elias in The Vault and Weekend From Hell. In Halloween 2: The Ghost of Hetty's Past, she eventually understood that Molly was another victim of Elias rather than a harlot who had damaged their marriage by seducing her husband. They reconciled, but Hetty only went so far as admitting that Molly was the only good Irish person to exist.
Quotes[]
- "Over my dead body! ... I know." (Trailer)
- I cannot believe Elias is back. Till death do us part it's right in the vows.” (The Vault)
- "Careful, you cad. Those sconces are made of pure leaded crystal. They are worth more than Oklahoma." (Possession)
- "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" (Possession)
- "Oh, that was better than cocaine."
- "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Hetty realizing she is Irish (The Not-So-Silent Partner)
Trivia[]
- Opening intro objects:
- Painting of Elias Woodstone (Hello!)
- Detergent (Alberta's Podcast)
- Painting of herself as a young lady (He Sees Dead People)
- Shamrock pillow (St. Hetty's Day)
- Egyptian scroll (Halloween 5: The Mummy)
- She is the American version of Fanny.
- She is noticeably absent in the episodes:
- Hetty believed that Molly seduced her husband until her afterlife.
- She gets aroused sitting on top of the broken washing machine in the episode Alberta's Podcast.
- Hetty calls a union the "u word" in The Baby Bjorn.
- One of her favorite shows is "Bodices and Barons" as mentioned in The Baby Bjorn.
- In the episode Trevor's Body, she notes that she's a stickler for etiquette.
- She doesn't condone drinking events in the episode The Liquor License.
- Hetty and Isaac have an afternoon ponder together as mentioned in A Date To Remember.
- She and Nigel Chessum do not like each other which is mentioned in A Date To Remember.
- Hetty loves dinner parties and would gently mock the hostess when she leaves the room in the episode Dinner Party.
- She got the taxidermist who did President Garfield's beagle to do a raven for her in Halloween 2: The Ghost of Hetty's Past.
- She enjoys watching lumberjack videos as of The Christmas Spirit.
- Rebecca Wisocky once appeared in a Cold Case episode called Torn in 2007, where she played a suffragette in 1918, Alice B. Harris who ironically is the polar opposite of Hetty, giving her conservative views of how woman shouldn't be allowed to vote in her time, whereas Alice was fighting for the rights of women to vote at her time.
- Additionally Rebecca Wisocky appeared in a 2017 episode of Modern Family in No Small Feet where her character is deeply superstitious and afraid of ghosts. She thinks that a house she wants to buy is haunted and will not moved in unless its cleansed. Now she is playing a ghost.
- She and Trevor "did it" several times as mentioned in Man of Your Dreams since they've been sneaking around together.
- She calls Flower a "Bohemian" due to not being familiar with the hippie movement.[24]
- She saw a ghost get "sucked off" after resolving a long-standing issue once, before the start of the series.[25]
- Her exact relationship to Sam is unknown. In the pilot, she clear states she is Sophie's great-great-grandmother. Sophie is Sam's great-aunt, so this would make Hetty a direct ancestor of Sam. However, in S2E4 she states that Sam's future children will be her 5x-great nieces/nephews, meaning she is Sam's 4x-great aunt. In S2E15 she states she is Sam's 3x-great aunt. It is possible she is confused (unlikely given how closely she watches her family), or that the writer's did not maintain internal consistency.
- In The Vault, after Elias descended into Hell, Hetty initially assumed her power was to send people up or down. She attempted to test this on Trevor but it failed.
- Hetty is shown to have a craving for drugs, namely cocaine.
- Hetty did a séance to impress a lady known as Mrs. Astor. She assumed that it worked due to the lights flickering and a smell of death surrounded them, but recounting this in the afterlife made Hetty realise that it was Thor and Isaac messing with them.
- Hetty's actress, Rebecca Wisocky, stated that she would love Chappell Roan.
- Hetty admitted that she sees Sam as a daughter.[26]
- With her grandmother, Mary, being the Irish one in her bloodline, this makes Hetty at least 25% Irish.
Gallery[]
Promos[]
Stills[]
Screenshots[]
References[]
- ↑ Victorian in the UK
- ↑ Hetty was 25 when she chose love over money in the flashback in He Sees Dead People, which takes place in 1875, making her birth year 1850 — Ghosts: Rebecca Wisocky Discusses Hetty’s ‘Devastating’ Cause of Death (Interview) (April 2024)
- ↑ When Hetty is angrily talking with Elias, she tells him he is her "least favorite cousin," meaning that she (and he) have other cousins.
- ↑ Weekend From Hell
- ↑ He Sees Dead People
- ↑ Alberta's Fan
- ↑ He Sees Dead People
- ↑ The Vault
- ↑ The Tree
- ↑ He Sees Dead People
- ↑ Possession
- ↑ The Family Business.
- ↑ Attic Girl
- ↑ Halloween 2: The Ghost of Hetty's Past
- ↑ Possession
- ↑ The Tree
- ↑ Jay's Friends
- ↑ Hello, Brother
- ↑ Alberta's Fan
- ↑ Possession
- ↑ Holes Are Bad
- ↑ Pilot
- ↑ Halloween 2: The Ghost of Hetty's Past
- ↑ "Hello!", "Holes are Bad"
- ↑ "Viking Funeral"
- ↑ Farnsby & B