Tessie Hutchinson is an ordinary housewife who accepts life as it comes to her without questioning its values until it is too late.
She arrives late at the annual lottery and chats easily with her neighbors, saying she had almost forgotten it. This suggests it is not an event she wants to think about. Nevertheless, it is a tradition in her village, and she apparently goes along with it every year without raising any problems. She doesn't seem to feel the least bit of fear that she might be the chosen sacrifice.
Tessie Hutchinson is an "everyman," a conventional person willing to put up with evil or barbarism and not rock the boat until the evil touches her. Then, it is another story. When her family's name and then her name is drawn in the lottery, suddenly the procedure, and her fate, are "unfair." She apparently has lacked the empathy to understand how others might feel as the victims of an arbitrary stoning. By the time it is her turn, she has participated too long to expect any mercy.
Jackson's story suggests that we speak up against injustice rather than assume, like Tessie, that it will never happen to us.
In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Tessie Hutchinson is first characterized as a harried housewife who has simply forgotten that it is lottery day until she notices her husband and children are gone. It is possible that her forgetfulness is either intentional or a subconscious effort to avoid the lottery. She hurries to the gathering, greets her neighbors, and makes a lighthearted joke about her tardiness. She urges her husband to quickly take his slip of paper, cracking another joke that amuses those standing near. Her levity quickly comes to an end, however, once she sees that the lottery will claim one of her family members. She adopts a protesting, defensive tone. Getting no support from her husband or any of the crowd, she becomes quieter, yet insistent that the proceedings aren't being conducted fairly. Her defiance intensifies, and her husband has to pry her paper from her hand. Tessie Hutchinson does not accept her fate uncomplainingly, which makes her death by stoning all the more unsettling at the story's conclusion.
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