# Against the Grain — Character guide

> Key figures in Against the Grain by J.-K. Huysmans.

- [Des Esseintes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/des_esseintes.md): Des Esseintes is the last of an exhausted aristocratic line, and he has chosen to live alone with his books, his perfumes, and his carefully staged illusions rather than endure the stupidity of modern society. His projec
- [Salomé](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/salome.md): Salomé exists for Des Esseintes not as a woman but as a painted and written obsession, a figure of jewelled depravity who lets him escape the dullness of his own century. She belongs to the same appetite that draws him t
- [Miss Urania](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/miss_urania.md): Miss Urania is the living woman on whom Des Esseintes tries to hang his dream of a hard, brutal, virile beauty, reading his own inverted desires into the fixed smile she wears while turning on her trapeze. She courts him
- [Marquis de Sade](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/the_marquis_de_sade.md): De Sade enters Des Esseintes' world through the library rather than the drawing room, as a writer whose frankness about the most mysterious impulses of human temperament becomes a kind of honesty. In a century Des Essein
- [Charles Baudelaire](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/baudelaire.md): Baudelaire is the writer Des Esseintes credits with expressing the inexpressible, defining with strange sanity the fleeting and evanescent conditions of broken spirits. After Baudelaire, the number of French books on his
- [Gustave Moreau](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/gustave_moreau.md): Moreau belongs to the same impulse that makes Des Esseintes prefer the Tentation de Saint-Antoine to the Education sentimentale: a hunger for the remote, the fabulous, the magnificently barbaric, anything but modern exis
- [Paul Verlaine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/verlaine.md): Decadent poet whose work is analyzed by Des Esseintes as a master of linguistic artifice.
- [Edgar Allan Poe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/edgar_allan_poe.md): American writer whose tales of horror and logic fascinate Des Esseintes.
- [Arthur Schopenhauer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/schopenhauer.md): German philosopher whose pessimism resonates with Des Esseintes' worldview.
- [Barbey d'Aurévilly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/barbey_daurevilly.md): Catholic writer whose dandyism and style are praised by Des Esseintes.
- [Stéphane Mallarmé](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/mallarme.md): Poet whose hermetic style is admired by Des Esseintes for its obscurity.
- [Jan Luyken](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/jan_luyken.md): Dutch engraver whose religious illustrations are collected by Des Esseintes.
- [Tertullian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/tertullian.md): Early Christian writer whose asceticism is referenced by Des Esseintes.
- [the doctor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/the_doctor.md): Physician who advises Des Esseintes on his failing health.
- [the servant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/his_servant.md): Unnamed household staff who attend to Des Esseintes' needs.
- [Madame Laure](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/madame_laure.md): Proprietress of a brothel visited by Des Esseintes.
- [Auguste Langlois](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/auguste_langlois.md): Friend who lends Des Esseintes a tortoise encrusted with jewels.
- [Ruysbroek](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/ruysbroek.md): Flemish mystic whose spiritual writings are admired by Des Esseintes.
- [De Falloux](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/de_falloux.md): French politician and historian mentioned in a list of authors.
- [Honoré de Balzac](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/balzac.md): Novelist whose 'La Comédie humaine' is a touchstone for Des Esseintes.
- [Victor Hugo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/victor_hugo.md): Poet and novelist whose romanticism is critiqued by Des Esseintes.
- [D'Aigurande](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/daigurande.md): Minor character mentioned in a list of acquaintances.
- [Christ](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/against_the_grain_se/characters/christ.md): Central figure of Christianity, referenced in Des Esseintes' religious musings.

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