# Barchester Towers — Character guide

> Key figures in Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope.

- [Mr. Slope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mr_slope.md): Slope arrives at the palace as chaplain and immediately becomes the engine of the new regime, courting Eleanor Bold and scheming for the hospital and the deanery. He hates Dr. Grantly not out of passion but because he fo
- [Eleanor Bold](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/eleanor_bold.md): Eleanor mourns John Bold with a devotion that clings even to his faults, and pours her remaining love into their infant son. Her fortune and her beauty make her a target for suitors — most alarmingly Mr. Slope — while he
- [Mr. Arabin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mr_arabin.md): Arabin is the new vicar of St. Ewold's, a bookish man whom the archdeacon enlists in the fight against Slope. His apparent gaiety during Eleanor's troubles irritates her family, who suspect him of indifference or worse, 
- [Mr. Harding](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mr_harding.md): Harding has lost Hiram's Hospital and now finds himself proposed for the deanery by friends who plot his future without consulting him. He is shuffled between Plumstead and Barchester, his mild protests drowned out by th
- [Dr. Proudie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/dr_proudie.md): Proudie is nominally the head of the diocese, but his wife manages his household and Slope manages his business, leaving him to murmur 'hum, ha' while others decide. He is not a bad man, only a weak one, and his weakness
- [Mrs. Proudie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mrs_proudie.md): Mrs. Proudie presides over the palace with the confidence of a woman who knows she is the real bishop, dispensing patronage and snubbing the Signora Neroni with equal relish. She and Slope begin as allies and end as riva
- [Archdeacon Grantly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/archdeacon_grantly.md): Dr. Grantly commands the clerical establishment of Barchester with the assurance of a man who has never imagined it otherwise, and the arrival of Bishop Proudie and his chaplain Slope threatens everything he holds dear. 
- [Signora Neroni](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/signora_neroni.md): Carried into every drawing-room on a sofa she insists upon securing in advance, Madeline Neroni turns the bishop's reception and Miss Thorne's fête into theaters for her own amusement, targeting parsons old and young, sa
- [Bertie Stanhope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/bertie_stanhope.md): Ethelbert Stanhope, with his silken beard, light blue eyes, and strange dress, is unlike any man Eleanor Bold has known, and his easy familiarity draws her into a friendship she never suspects is dangerous. His sister Ch
- [Charlotte Stanhope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/charlotte_stanhope.md): Charlotte Stanhope is the practical intelligence behind the Stanhope household, encouraging her father's neglect of his livings, her mother's idleness, her sister's scandals, and her brother's uselessness, all so she may
- [Miss Thorne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/miss_thorne.md): Miss Thorne invites all the country round to a breakfast on the lawn at Ullathorne—tents, archery, fiddlers, races, and every game she can trace to the good days of Queen Elizabeth—and the party becomes the novel's great
- [Mr. Thorne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mr_thorne.md): Mr. Thorne shares Ullathorne with his sister and observes the ecclesiastical maneuvering around him with the detachment of a man whose estates are his own and whose comfort matters more than controversy. He declines to p
- [Mr. Quiverful](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mr_quiverful.md): Mr. Quiverful of Puddingdale is a poor clergyman whose overflowing household makes the wardenship of Hiram's Hospital look less like preferment than survival. He and his wife must trudge or beg rides into Barchester whil
- [Mrs. Quiverful](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mrs_quiverful.md): Mrs. Quiverful manages a vicarage bursting with children and a husband whose prospects rest on other men's whims. Too stout to walk to Barchester and too proud to explain herself to Farmer Subsoil, she arrives at the pal
- [Dr. Stanhope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/dr_stanhope.md): Dr. Vesey Stanhope holds a comfortable stall in the cathedral but has long preferred Como to his duties, leaving his livings to run themselves. His clever daughter Charlotte has encouraged his indolence and quietly smoth
- [Mrs. Stanhope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mrs_stanhope.md): Dr. Stanhope's wife, an invalid living abroad.
- [Mary Bold](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mary_bold.md): John Bold's sister and Eleanor's close friend.
- [Johnny Bold](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/johnny_bold.md): Eleanor and John Bold's infant son.
- [Dr. Gwynne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/dr_gwynne.md): The Master of Lazarus College, Oxford, a friend of Mr. Harding.
- [Mr. Plomacy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mr_plomacy.md): The steward at Ullathorne, managing the estate.
- [Mrs. Grantly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mrs_grantly.md): The Archdeacon's wife, a sensible and kind woman.
- [Harry Greenacre](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/harry_greenacre.md): A young farmer who courts one of the Lookaloft girls.
- [Mrs. Greenacre](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/mrs_greenacre.md): Harry Greenacre's mother, a respectable farmer's wife.
- [Lady De Courcy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/lady_de_courcy.md): An aristocratic woman who visits Ullathorne.
- [Dr. Trefoil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/dr_trefoil.md): The elderly Dean of Barchester, whose death precipitates events.
- [Olivia Proudie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/barchester_towers_se/characters/olivia_proudie.md): One of Dr. and Mrs. Proudie's daughters.

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