Character guide

Laura

major

Also known as Little Laura, Laura Flying Arrow, Mrs. Laura

Laura rebuilt her social position after the divorce by posing as a deserted mother, then discovered that the ladies bored her and that she preferred men, cards, and financiers to mothers' circles. Her dressing table is an altar and her mirror a god; her egoism flourishes under that spell while Georg is boarded out, hidden, and half-forgotten. She is the novel's clearest study of charm as a survival strategy, and her household is where the Selamb men's money troubles and romantic entanglements quietly converge.

Peter Selamb

major

Also known as Peter, Peter the Boss, Peter the Watchdog, Master Peter

Peter has just failed to be promoted and spends his summer holidays grinding at algebra in the dilapidated room once used by Old Hök to surveil the estate. He cannot concentrate, cannot look anything straight in the face, and steals out to hide in the lilac hedge and watch the bailiff hang lanterns for a crayfish party. His furtive watching is the book's central nervous habit: he is the heir who has inherited suspicion instead of authority, and everything he sees from the window will shape how the family's decline reaches him.

Hedvig

major

Also known as Sister Hedvig, The Angel of Death Hedvig, Hedvig Hill

Raised on old Kristin's threats about the sugar box and the Bogey Man, Hedvig grew up fearing a God who punishes incendiaries and watches brownies, and she never escaped those first impressions. Now a trained nurse, she speaks of a patient's death as a thing to be waited out before she can take the next case, and her voice carries an unnaturally tense anguish even when she knows her lesson. She is the book's most disturbing figure precisely because her dread is sincere: she runs toward dying people the way the frightened haunt cemeteries.

Stellan Selamb

major

Also known as Captain Stellan Selamb, Captain Selamb, lazy Stellan

Stellan lives on an inborn conviction that the best belongs to him and his kind, which is precisely why he stays afloat while his finances rot. He shrugs off his debts as a way of keeping from getting fat, dodges his colonel's hints about marriage, and cheerfully extracts Percy Hill's signature on a bill on his way out the door. He is the family's elegant, doomed credit system: charming enough to keep borrowing, and too proud to do the one thing everyone tells him would save him.

Tord Selamb

major

Also known as little Tord, Tord of Järnö, the magnificent Tord

Tord has withdrawn to his log castle on the dark hill of Järnö, where he fires warning shots at boats and is pursued by the provincial governor for neglect. The family tells stories about him at dinner with a mixture of embarrassment and relish, calling him mad and a philosopher in the same breath. He is the Selamb refusal carried to its logical end: a man who would rather be a living protest against sentimentality than be reconciled with anyone, and the visit Stellan and Laura pay him is one of the novel's great set pieces.

Percy Hill

supporting

Also known as little Percy, Percy, Hill

Percy is dissatisfied with his nurse and desperate for a face and temperament worth an artist's attention, so Stellan promises him his sister Hedvig and casually collects Percy's signature on a bill before leaving. Percy's gratitude is touching and entirely genuine, which makes him easy prey for the Selamb habit of trading favors. His illness brings Hedvig into the household orbit, and his eagerness to be looked after by someone strange and sombre sets up the novel's most charged caretaking relationship.

Herman

supporting

Also known as Poor Herman, the excellent Herman

Herman is the eligible young man of Ekbacken, the household where Laura Selamb performs her most flattering self, and his father secretly delights in the pair's walks together. He is at once shy and hurt in the neglected garden, sensing that Laura's talk of beauty is a farewell rather than a discovery. His gentle, unguarded affection becomes the measure against which Laura's calculating charm is exposed, giving the early chapters their quiet ache.

Jacob Levy

supporting

Also known as Levy, Mr. Levy, the insistent Levy

Levy is the outsider who talks his way past Hedvig's defences, mocking her moss-grown fortune as a fund for widows and orphans while offering her six percent instead of three and a half. His quick, purposeful assurance feels almost supernatural to her overcautious mind, and he answers her suspicious questions with such ardour that money becomes a medium she moves through rather than a wall around her. He matters because he tears the Selambs' cloistered world open to the wider, world-embracing egoism of business.

Dagmar Selamb

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Dagmar Selamb, Dagmar, a Selamb

Dagmar lives in the wind-shaken house at Selambshof, grey-complexioned and ragged, so isolated she has not spoken to a woman in years. When Laura and Stellan arrive with boxes of food, she dives into a wardrobe to make herself smart, then hammers a broken zinc tub and shouts into the roaring wind for Tord to come and eat. Her mixture of terror, hunger, and a last glimmer of beauty makes her the novel's most pitiful image of what the Selamb decline produces.

Manne von Strelert

supporting

Also known as Lieutenant Manne von Strelert, Baron Manne von Strelert, poor Manne

Manne moves easily among the uniforms and quadrille riders at the tennis pavilion, protesting gallantly that charming ladies should not be tempted into the clouds. His teasing about the cavalry being outdistanced by the air force only spurs Elvira on, exactly as Stellan counted on. He embodies the polished, slightly idle officer class whose social rituals Stellan exploits, and his friendly rivalry with Stellan frames the early set pieces of ambition and display.

Herman Hermansson

supporting

Also known as old Hermansson

Old Hermansson rose by marrying his employer's daughter, and he still regards Selambshof as an old distinguished place, secretly flattered that Laura walks with Herman. He nods pensively at her complaints about Peter, who exposed Brundin, and offers her Ekbacken as a refuge without seeing that he is being managed. His fond, perplexed indulgence of Laura is the hinge on which her scheme of escape turns, making him both her dupe and her ladder.

Frida Öberg

supporting

Also known as Frida, The excellent Frida

Frida arrives with a bundle of starched shirts and the memory of a night Peter once glimpsed her behind a blind, and she defends herself laughingly when he seizes her for a grotesque dance. She is worldly enough to stop at the bedroom threshold, thanking him for his kindness while a hard look comes into her eyes at his coarse reproach about the bailiff. Her easy, insinuating warmth and her refusal to be cornered expose Peter's bluster and the emptiness of the house he reigns over alone.

Georg Hermansson

supporting

Also known as little Georg, Georg, Dear little Georg

Georg is the child Laura once displayed as a deserted mother's baby and now hides away as a reminder of her age, handed off to changing nurses and strangers whenever she travels or entertains. He lies awake in the dark listening to her guests through closed doors, loving the parties he is forbidden to join. His lonely, forgiving watchfulness quietly measures the cost of his mother's mirrored self-worship, and it is through his eyes that the household's glitter first looks like something a child must survive.

Kristin

minor

Also known as old Kristin, Old Kristin

An elderly servant or family member, often in the background.

Oskar Selamb

minor

Also known as old Oskar

An older Selamb family member, possibly a patriarch figure.

Mr. Brundin

minor

Also known as Brundin, the mighty Brundin, VII Brundin

A formidable character, possibly a rival or authority figure.

Elvira Lähnfeldt

minor

Also known as Elvira, Lähnfeldt

A woman from the Lähnfeldt family, involved in social circles.

Count Lähnfeldt

minor

Also known as Lähnfeldt

A count and head of the Lähnfeldt family, a noble figure.

Bernhard

minor

Also known as little Bernhard

A young boy, possibly a child in the story.

Ohlesson

minor

A minor character, possibly a local or worker.

Axel Brundin

minor

Also known as the stubborn Brundin

A stubborn member of the Brundin family, possibly a relative.

Lundbom

minor

Also known as old Lundbom, Old Lundbom

An older character, possibly a neighbor or local figure.

Miss Lähnfeldt

minor

A young woman from the Lähnfeldt family, possibly Elvira's relative.

Old Hök

minor

Also known as Old Hök

An older character, possibly a local or servant.

Kalle Brundin

minor

Also known as Brundin

A member of the Brundin family, possibly a younger relative.

Eklund

minor

Also known as Eklund Peter

A character possibly connected to Peter, with limited presence.

Count Alexis von Borgk

minor

Also known as Count von Borgk, Alexis, von Borgk

A count and nobleman, part of the social elite.

Ekbacken

minor

Also known as old Ekbacken

An older character, possibly a landowner or local.

William Hermansson

minor

Also known as old William

An older Hermansson family member, possibly a relative.

Enoch

minor

Also known as old Enoch, Old Enoch

An older character, possibly a servant or local figure.

Anders

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or worker.

Herman Bogislaus Lähnfeldt

minor

Also known as old Herman

An older member of the Lähnfeldt family.

The Judge

minor

A legal authority figure who appears in the narrative.

Kolsnäs

minor

Also known as old Kolsnäs

An older character, possibly a landowner or local.

Mamma

minor

A mother figure, possibly to one of the main characters.

Heavy Ox

minor

Also known as Ox

A character with a nickname, possibly a strongman or laborer.

O. W. Thomson

minor

Also known as Thomson

A character with a formal name, possibly a professional.

Old Johannes

minor

An older character, possibly a servant or local figure.

Miss Elvira

minor

A young woman, possibly a variant of Elvira Lähnfeldt.

Miss Isaksson

minor

Also known as Isaksson

A woman, possibly a governess or servant.

Mrs. Elvira

minor

A married woman, possibly Elvira Lähnfeldt after marriage.

Black Panther

minor

A character with a symbolic or nickname, possibly a reference.

Mrs. Hill

minor

A mother figure, possibly Percy Hill's mother.

Countess von Borgk

minor

A noblewoman, wife of Count Alexis von Borgk.

Mother

minor

A generic mother figure, possibly a minor character.

Bailiff Inglund

minor

Also known as Inglund

A bailiff, a legal or administrative official.

Enoch Selamb

minor

A member of the Selamb family, possibly a relative.

Mr. Sundelius

minor

Also known as Sundelius, Mr. P. Sundelius

A character with a formal name, possibly a professional.

Old Kerstin

minor

Also known as Kerstin

An older female character, possibly a servant.