Morticia Addams (née Frump) is a fictional character from The Addams Family television and film series. The character was created by cartoonist Charles Addams in 1933.
Morticia is the wife of Gomez Addams and mother of Wednesday, Pugsley and Pubert Addams. The character originated in the Charles Addams cartoons for The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s. In the cartoons, none of the family members had names. When the characters were adapted to the 1964 television series, Charles Addams' selection of her name was inspired by "mortician". Morticia's maiden name is "Frump" and she has an older sister named Ophelia Frump (also played by Carolyn Jones, in the original TV series). In the television series, her mother (Uncle Fester's sister) was named Hester Frump (played by Margaret Hamilton). Her mother-in-law is Grandmama Addams. In the 1990s Addams Family films, familial relationships are changed for the characters of Grandmama and Fester. Grandmama is actually Morticia's mother, not Gomez's, while Fester is Gomez's brother, not Morticia's uncle.
Morticia is described as a witch; she is slim, with extremely pale skin and long flowing straight black hair. In one episode she is seen wearing a black pointed hat. She commonly wears black hobble dresses to match her hair, tightly form fitting, with a fringe of octopus-like cloth "tentacles" at the lower hem. According to Wednesday, Morticia applies baking powder to her face instead of actual makeup. In each episode, she easily allures her husband Gomez by speaking French (or any other foreign language for that matter). Morticia is musically inclined, and is often seen freely strumming a Japanese shamisen. She frequently enjoys cutting the buds off of roses, which she discards (keeping only the stems), likes cutting out paper dolls with three heads and making sweaters with three arms, collecting the mail from the hand-in-the-box Thing, and cooking unusual concoctions for her husband, including eye of newt. Her personal pet is Cleopatra, a fictitious breed of carnivorous plant called an African Strangler, to which she feeds hamburgers and other various meat.
Morticia's family tree can be traced back to Salem, Massachusetts, and witchcraft is also implied at times in the television series. For example, Morticia likes to "smoke," an activity that does not involve cigarettes or cigars (such as her husband frequently enjoys), but smoke instead emanates from below her.
In 2009, she was included in Yahoo!'s Top 10 TV Moms from Six Decades of Television for the time period 1964–1966. AOL named her one of the 100 Most Memorable Female TV Characters.