# Heartbreak House — Character guide

> Key figures in Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw.

- [Captain Shotover](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/captain_shotover.md): Shotover rules Heartbreak House with rum, nautical bluster, and a pistol he keeps for burglars and daughters alike. He has spent a lifetime seeking a 'seventh degree of concentration' and now senses his household, like E
- [Ellie Dunn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/ellie_dunn.md): Ellie arrives at Heartbreak House as Boss Mangan's fiancée, a transaction she defends with unnerving composure: 'a woman's business is marriage.' She is in love with Hector Hushabye, a fact she shares with his wife, and 
- [Hesione Hushabye](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/hesione_hushabye.md): Hesione presides over her father's chaotic house with charm, laughter, and an unnerving talent for emotional manipulation. She has told Ellie she knows of the girl's love for Hector, and she keeps Mangan dangling as a su
- [Hector Hushabye](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/hector_hushabye.md): Hector Hushabye is the kind of man women fall in love with on sight and men dismiss as a fraud—which he cheerfully admits to being. He spins tales of tigers and duels, plays at being a romantic hero, and declares the hou
- [Lady Utterword](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/lady_utterword.md): Lady Utterword has spent years abroad as the wife of a colonial governor and returns to Heartbreak House with the air of someone inspecting a badly run estate. She diagnoses the house's problem as a lack of horses—the eq
- [Boss Mangan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/boss_mangan.md): Mangan arrives at Heartbreak House as the embodiment of capitalist power—a man who has 'stuck a ramrod into the other fellow's machinery' and been offered a government post for it. But under Hesione's and Ellie's cross-e
- [Mazzini Dunn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/mazzini_dunn.md): Mazzini Dunn drifts through Heartbreak House as the amiable ghost of failed idealism, a man who trusted the wrong partners and lost everything while keeping his conscience intact. His daughter Ellie loves him, yet his he
- [Randall Utterword](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/randall_utterword.md): Randall Utterword trails after his brother's wife with an infatuation that is part romance, part humiliation, and entirely public. He is all injured dignity and explosive temper, a man whose devotion curdles into sulks a
- [Nurse Guinness](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/nurse_guinness.md): Nurse Guinness moves through Heartbreak House with the authority of someone who has watched its inhabitants misbehave for years and has long since stopped being impressed. She speaks plainly where others perform, and her
- [Alfred](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/alfred.md): Alfred arrives at Heartbreak House as an intruder, but his real weapon is what he knows about the men who ruined him and others like him. He is neither villain nor victim in any simple sense, but a reminder that the worl
- [The Burglar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/the_burglar.md): A comic burglar who breaks into Heartbreak House, later revealed as an old acquaintance.
- [Addy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/heartbreak_house_se/characters/addy.md): A friend of the family, mentioned in passing as a social acquaintance.

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