# A Pair of Blue Eyes — Character guide

> Key figures in A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy.

- [Elfride Swancourt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/elfride_swancourt.md): Elfride has grown up in a cliffside parish with no society to sharpen her, so at nineteen she meets the world with a fifteen-year-old's social innocence and a woman's full capacity for feeling. Her emotions lie near the 
- [Stephen Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/stephen_smith.md): Stephen arrives at Endelstow as a working architect's assistant, socially beneath the Swancourts yet educated enough to move among them, and falls hard for Elfride. His parents are plain Wessex folk — his mother argues t
- [Henry Knight](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/henry_knight.md): Knight is Stephen's older friend and intellectual patron, a man whose eyes 'permeated rather than penetrated' and whose library is the soul of his house. He prides himself on reading character the way he reads books, and
- [Mr. Swancourt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/mr_swancourt.md): Christopher Swancourt is a widowed clergyman on the sea-swept edge of Lower Wessex, ambitious for the family name and quick to take offense when his dignity is touched. He dotes on Elfride in his way but treats her futur
- [Mrs. Swancourt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/mrs_swancourt.md): Mrs. Swancourt enters the vicarage as a second wife with opinions about rank, propriety, and what is owed to a clergyman's family. Her presence changes the emotional weather of Endelstow, giving Elfride a stepmother to r
- [John Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/john_smith.md): John Smith is a working mason of the neighborhood, unassuming and steady, the kind of man who lifts his hat respectfully and wishes himself out of entanglements he only half understands. His trade and his plain Wessex sp
- [Mrs. Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/mrs_smith.md): Stephen Smith's mother, a kind and practical woman.
- [Mrs. Jethway](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/poor_mrs_jethway.md): Mrs. Jethway belongs to the parish's poorer ranks, a woman whose loss has stripped her of ordinary social defenses and left her fixated on the young lady she holds responsible. Her grief curdles into a quiet, watchful gr
- [William Worm](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/william_worm.md): Worm is the vicar's long-suffering man-of-all-work, trailing behind the household with a deafness he describes as a perpetual sizzle of fish in a pan. He grumbles about social pretension and his own decline, yet stays lo
- [Unity](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/unity.md): A maid in the Swancourt household, often flustered by events.
- [Lord Luxellian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/lord_luxellian.md): Lord Luxellian is the local peer and a relative of the Swancourts, a man whose charm lies entirely in his laugh rather than his abilities. People forgive his lack of talent because his manner is so winning, and he glides
- [Miss Swancourt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/miss_swancourt.md): An older unmarried relative of the Swancourt family, often visiting.
- [Pansy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/pansy.md): Elfride's pet dog, a small spaniel.
- [Martin Cannister](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/martin_cannister.md): A local farmer and neighbor of the Swancourts.
- [Mr. Hewby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/mr_hewby.md): An architect in London who employs Stephen Smith.
- [Robert Lickpan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/robert_lickpan.md): The local carrier who transports goods and people.
- [Charlotte Troyton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/charlotte_troyton.md): Mrs. Troyton's daughter, a friend of Elfride.
- [General Sir Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters/general_sir_stephen_fitzmaurice_smith.md): A distinguished military officer and relative of the Smith family.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_pair_of_blue_eyes_se/characters