Character guide

Kitty Grimshaw

major

Also known as Kitty

Kitty belongs to the intimate world the narrator leaves behind when she walks out one February evening with no money and only her own personality between her and starvation. Her presence haunts the experiment: every doss-house doorstep and freezing platform is measured against the safety of a home where Kitty waits. She matters because she turns a social investigation into a love story, binding the reader's heart to the narrator's dangerous double life.

Dick

major

Dick moves through the world the narrator has abandoned, a keeper of her real identity while she poses as a destitute cook with a brown-paper parcel. He embodies the tension between the comfortable life she left and the hunger she chose to understand. His loyalty gives the narrative its emotional counterweight, reminding readers that the woman on the freezing platform is never quite as alone as she pretends.

the Master

supporting

Also known as The Master, the master

The Master represents the arbitrary power that governs the lives of London's working poor, the person whose whim can mean a bed or a night on the pavement. For the narrator, every encounter with such authority is a test of her disguise and her nerve. He matters because he shows how dignity in poverty depends on pleasing strangers who hold all the cards.

Ida

supporting

Ida inhabits the precarious female economy of hostels, lodgings, and casual work, where alliances form fast and dissolve faster. She is the kind of woman who notices too much, and the narrator must decide how much of herself to reveal. Her presence sharpens the question at the heart of the book: how do you stay honest when survival demands a performance?

Millie

supporting

Also known as Mental Millie

Millie survives on the margins of the marginal, her nickname a casual cruelty that follows her through the shelters and doss-houses. She is both warning and mirror to the narrator, showing what London does to women who cannot keep up the performance of respectability. Her vulnerability forces the reader to see that destitution is not only about money but about the mercy, or its absence, of strangers.

George Gissing

minor

Also known as George

A named individual, possibly a historical figure or acquaintance.

Poor Alice

minor

Also known as Alice

A tragic figure, likely a victim of poverty or circumstance.

Annie Turner

minor

Also known as Annie

A named woman with a brief but distinct role.