# Main Street — Character guide

> Key figures in Main Street by Sinclair Lewis.

- [Carol Kennicott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/carol_kennicott.md): A restless St. Paul idealist who marries a small-town doctor and finds Gopher Prairie both a cause to fight for and a trap she can't quite escape.
- [Dr. Will Kennicott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/will_kennicott.md): A bluff, competent country doctor who loves his wife, his car, and his duck-blind, and cannot fathom why any of it should ever be questioned.
- [Vida Sherwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/vida_sherwin.md): A chipmunk-energetic schoolteacher who recruits Carol for Gopher Prairie's causes, offering friendship and Sunday School in the same eager breath.
- [Guy Pollock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/guy_pollock.md): A gentle, dusty-office lawyer whose cultured sensibility and quiet loneliness make him the one man in town Carol can imagine talking to.
- [Erik Valborg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/erik_valborg.md): A dreamy young tailor who reads poetry and imagines Italian châteaux, and who mistakes Carol for the escape his small-town life keeps promising.
- [Bea Sorenson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/bea_sorenson.md): A cheerful Swedish-American hired girl whose plain good sense and steady affection offer Carol a warmth the town's polite ladies never quite manage.
- [Miles Bjornstam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/miles_bjornstam.md): Miles Bjornstam is the village's resident heretic, a laborer whose open contempt for boosters, bankers, and church socials makes him both an embarrassment and a strange relief. He nurses a stubborn, unrequited tenderness
- [Cyrus N. Bogart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/cyrus_bogart.md): Cy Bogart is the town's busybody-in-chief, forever sniffing out impropriety and reporting it with pious relish to anyone who will listen. His meddling turns private lives into public property, and his feuds with the Kenn
- [Sam Clark](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/sam_clark.md): Sam Clark is the kind of man everyone in Gopher Prairie counts as a friend — a back-slapping merchant who sings at the Kennicotts' piano and believes wholeheartedly in the town's bright future. His warmth is genuine, but
- [Fern Mullins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/fern_mullins.md): Fern Mullins arrives in town fresh from college, eager to teach and unafraid to laugh too loudly or stay out too late. Her easy rapport with students and her independence of manner scandalize the town's matrons, who tran
- [Juanita Haydock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/juanita_haydock.md): Juanita Haydock presides over the Jolly Seventeen's chatter with a flair that Carol initially dismisses as vulgarity and later comes to appreciate as genuine social intelligence. Her running commentary on neighbors, husb
- [Raymie Wutherspoon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/raymie_wutherspoon.md): Raymie Wutherspoon is the town's most unassuming man, a soft-spoken salesman who fusses over window displays and apologizes for existing. Under Vida Sherwin's encouragement he begins to imagine himself as a figure of aut
- [Mrs. Bogart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_bogart.md): Mrs. Bogart presides over the town's moral weather from a porch chair, cataloguing sins she has mostly inferred and reporting them as fact. Her righteousness is genuine but inseparable from her appetite for other people'
- [Percy Bresnahan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/percy_bresnahan.md): Bresnahan returns from the outside world trailing money, machinery, and the town's reflected pride, and he enjoys both the admiration and the distance it buys him. He is polished, confident, and fundamentally unintereste
- [Dave Dyer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/dave_dyer.md): The town druggist and a member of the local social circle.
- [Maud Dyer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/maud_dyer.md): Dave Dyer's hypochondriac wife, often jealous of Carol.
- [Harry Haydock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/harry_haydock.md): The son of the town's leading merchant, married to Juanita.
- [Aunt Bessie Smail](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/aunt_bessie.md): Carol's aunt who raised her after her parents' death.
- [Luke Dawson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/luke_dawson.md): An elderly, miserly farmer and one of the town's wealthier citizens.
- [Uncle Whittier Smail](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/uncle_whittier.md): Carol's gruff, conservative uncle who disapproves of her ideas.
- [Dr. Terry Gould](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/terry_gould.md): A young, flashy doctor who competes with Kennicott.
- [Ezra Stowbody](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/ezra_stowbody.md): The pompous, old-fashioned president of the local bank.
- [Ella Stowbody](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/ella_stowbody.md): Ezra Stowbody's spinster daughter, a faded gentlewoman.
- [Nat Hicks](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/nat_hicks.md): A local carpenter and handyman, part of the town's working class.
- [Ethel Villets](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/ethel_villets.md): A prim, gossipy librarian in Gopher Prairie.
- [James Blausser](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/james_blausser.md): A bombastic booster who tries to lead a town improvement campaign.
- [Champ Perry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/champ_perry.md): An elderly pioneer and former storekeeper, respected by the community.
- [Mrs. Champ Perry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_champ_perry.md): Champ Perry's gentle, old-fashioned wife.
- [Lyman Cass](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/lyman_cass.md): The stern, silent owner of the town's flour mill.
- [Myrtle Cass](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/myrtle_cass.md): Lyman Cass's awkward, unhappy daughter.
- [Jack Elder](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/jack_elder.md): A jovial, heavy-drinking traveling salesman.
- [Stewart Snyder](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/stewart_snyder.md): Carol's college sweetheart from St. Paul.
- [Hugh Kennicott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/hugh_kennicott.md): Carol and Will's young son.
- [Olaf Bjornstam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/olaf_bjornstam.md): Miles and Bea's infant son, who dies of typhoid.
- [Del Snafflin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/del_snafflin.md): A young man who works at the drugstore and later becomes a soldier.
- [Julius Flickerbaugh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/julius_flickerbaugh.md): A fussy, owl-like lawyer in Gopher Prairie.
- [Frederick Ludelmeyer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/frederick_ludelmeyer.md): The German-born owner of the town's hotel.
- [Reverend Zitterel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/reverend_zitterel.md): The noisy, evangelical pastor of the local church.
- [Mrs. Calibree](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_calibree.md): Dr. Calibree's wife, a quiet presence in the community.
- [Mrs. McGanum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_mcganum.md): A plump, amiable young wife in the town.
- [Dr. McGanum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/dr_mcganum.md): A young doctor, rival to Kennicott.
- [Mrs. Westlake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_westlake.md): The wife of old Dr. Westlake, a kindly gossip.
- [Dr. Westlake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/dr_westlake.md): An amiable, elderly physician nearing retirement.
- [Axel Egge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/axel_egge.md): A Swedish farmhand who works for the Dawsons.
- [Ole Jenson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/ole_jenson.md): The town's Norwegian grocer.
- [Mrs. Leonard Warren](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_leonard_warren.md): A society matron in Gopher Prairie.
- [George Edwin Mott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/george_edwin_mott.md): The local school principal and professor.
- [Mrs. George Edwin Mott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_mott.md): The professor's wife, active in town affairs.
- [Adolph Morgenroth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/adolph_morgenroth.md): A German-born tailor in town.
- [Nels Erdstrom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/nels_erdstrom.md): A Swedish farmhand and handyman.
- [Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/main_street_se/characters/mrs_wilks.md): A poor, struggling woman with many children.

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