# Basil — Character guide

> Key figures in Basil by Wilkie Collins.

- [Basil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/basil.md): Basil is the novel's narrator, a younger son whose rigid sense of honor collides with his father's unforgiving pride and his brother Ralph's reckless example. His secret marriage to Margaret Sherwin, bound by a strange y
- [Margaret Sherwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/margaret_sherwin.md): Margaret is the shopkeeper's daughter Basil weds against his father's wishes, agreeing to a bizarre year of probation before the marriage can be acknowledged. She listens hungrily to details of his family's wealth, dress
- [Robert Mannion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/robert_mannion.md): Mannion serves Mr. Sherwin in business and, oddly, in Margaret's education, yet he reveals nothing of his history or intentions. His stillness, his watchful attention to the ailing Mrs. Sherwin, and his refusal to be dra
- [Mr. Sherwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/mr_sherwin.md): Mr. Sherwin is a tradesman whose ignorance of France and the wider world is matched only by his confidence in his own shrewdness. He arranges the secret marriage and the humiliating year of probation, treating the whole 
- [Mrs. Sherwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/mrs_sherwin.md): Mrs. Sherwin sits in the dim light behind Basil and Margaret, a figure of dumb pain whose own suffering remains a mystery even to her husband and daughter. She shrinks from Mannion's gaze and can never quite explain her 
- [Clara](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/clara.md): Clara is the family's steady heart, usually undemonstrative yet visibly shattered when Basil's secret marriage becomes known. Her grief, seen through Ralph's account of her pacing with Basil's letter in hand, shames even
- [Ralph](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/ralph.md): Ralph is the family's original scamp, a gambler and idler who has lately been saved from ruin by the woman he calls his morganatic wife. He arrives in London to find Basil has eclipsed his old reputation for disgrace, an
- [Mr. Bernard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/mr_bernard.md): Mr. Bernard moves between the drawing room and the hospital ward, advising Basil's family while warning that a certain patient is a dangerous monomaniac who will end in a prison or a madhouse. His theories of infection a
- [Mr. Turner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/mr_turner.md): An acquaintance of Basil's family, involved in social circles.
- [Susan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/susan.md): A servant in the Sherwin household, privy to family secrets.
- [Mary Penhale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/mary_penhale.md): A woman connected to the Mannion family's past.
- [William Penhale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/william_penhale.md): A relative of Mary Penhale, mentioned in connection with past events.
- [The Doctor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/basil_se/characters/the_doctor.md): A physician attending to various characters during illnesses.

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