# Middlemarch — Character guide

> Key figures in Middlemarch by George Eliot.

- [Dorothea Brooke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/dorothea_brooke.md): Dorothea Brooke moves through Middlemarch society as an heiress whose beauty and intensity unsettle everyone who tries to manage her; she wants to manage her own property, and her own soul, if only she knew how. Her year
- [Tertius Lydgate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/tertius_lydgate.md): Lydgate brings new methods and larger ambitions to a provincial practice, certain that his profession is a vocation rather than a trade. He is drawn to Rosamond Vincy's beauty and composure without seeing the will beneat
- [Will Ladislaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/will_ladislaw.md): Will Ladislaw drifts into Middlemarch as Casaubon's cousin, charming, clever, and unplaceable in the town's tidy social map. He is drawn to Dorothea with a candor that scandalizes those who prefer discretion, and his lac
- [Rosamond Vincy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/rosamond_vincy.md): Rosamond Vincy is the mayor's daughter, schooled in music and manners and convinced that her future should be finer than Middlemarch. She chooses Lydgate as a husband who seems to promise elevation, but her serene surfac
- [Fred Vincy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/fred_vincy.md): Fred Vincy is the Vincy family's charming disappointment, educated beyond his effort and always behind at breakfast. He loves Mary Garth without quite deserving her, and he borrows against an inheritance from old Feather
- [Mr. Brooke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mr_brooke.md): Mr. Brooke shuffles through Middlemarch as a self-styled progressive who reads the newspapers and quotes them badly, while his tenants' gates rot and his rents stay high. He means no harm and does considerable harm, and 
- [Edward Casaubon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/edward_casaubon.md): Casaubon is the reverend scholar of Lowick, a man of formidable erudition and anxious timidity whose life's work, a Key to All Mythologies, swallows his days without ever nearing completion. He marries Dorothea expecting
- [Mary Garth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mary_garth.md): Mary Garth is the eldest daughter of the Garth family, employed as a governess and nurse in the Vincy household, where her level head and dry wit make her indispensable and unassuming. She loves Fred Vincy but will not a
- [Sir James Chettam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/sir_james_chettam.md): Sir James Chettam is a wealthy, well-meaning landowner who admires Dorothea Brooke and is baffled by her preference for the scholarly Casaubon. Made of excellent human dough, he is generous, conventional, and slightly ri
- [Celia Brooke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/celia_brooke.md): Celia Brooke is the practical, conventional foil to her idealistic sister, unimpressed by Mr. Casaubon's supposed great soul and quick to notice his white moles and sallow skin. She loves Dorothea but finds her notions a
- [Caleb Garth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/caleb_garth.md): Caleb Garth is a hardworking, plainspoken land agent and father of Mary, respected for his integrity in a world of shifting loyalties and self-interest. Dismissed once from the Tipton agency, he is asked to resume it alo
- [Nicholas Bulstrode](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/nicholas_bulstrode.md): Nicholas Bulstrode is the wealthy, evangelical banker who dominates Middlemarch's affairs with an air of stern piety and generous patronage. Beneath his upright manner lies a hidden history and a growing hypochondria tha
- [John Raffles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/john_raffles.md): Raffles is a barroom Adonis gone to seed, a man who signs himself W.A.G. and calls his old schoolmaster Ba-Lamb, and who has spent decades cadging money from anyone he can corner. His stepson Josh Rigg drives him off wit
- [Camden Farebrother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/camden_farebrother.md): Farebrother presides over an old stone parsonage stuffed with his father's and grandfather's relics, where his white-haired mother steers every conversation and his tiny aunt Miss Noble smuggles sugar into a basket for p
- [Mrs. Garth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mrs_garth.md): Caleb Garth's capable, sharp-tongued wife and mother of their children.
- [Mrs. Cadwallader](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mrs_cadwallader.md): Mrs. Cadwallader moves through Middlemarch society with companionable jokes and pared-down prices, giving neighborliness to both rank and religion while keeping everyone slightly on edge. She corners Mr. Brooke in his ow
- [Mr. Vincy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mr_vincy.md): Rosamond and Fred's father, a prosperous but imprudent manufacturer.
- [Mrs. Bulstrode](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mrs_bulstrode.md): Harriet Vincy married Bulstrode out of thorough inclination, and she believes in him as an excellent man whose lay piety has raised her own position in Middlemarch. Yet she refrains from saying what she thinks when Raffl
- [Peter Featherstone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/peter_featherstone.md): Old Featherstone lies in bed counting his relations as they come peeping and casting up, delighting in the fools who wait on his death. At three in the morning he orders Mary Garth to fetch a will from his iron chest so 
- [Joshua Rigg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/joshua_rigg.md): Featherstone's illegitimate son who inherits Stone Court and sells it.
- [Borthrop Trumbull](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/borthrop_trumbull.md): A pompous auctioneer who handles the Featherstone estate sale.
- [Frank Hawley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/frank_hawley.md): A lawyer and outspoken critic of Bulstrode in Middlemarch politics.
- [Mrs. Farebrother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mrs_farebrother.md): The vicar's mother, a dignified elderly woman living with him.
- [Henrietta Noble](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/henrietta_noble.md): Farebrother's elderly, sweet-natured aunt who dotes on everyone.
- [Lady Chettam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/lady_chettam.md): Sir James's mother, a kindly but conventional dowager.
- [Mrs. Plymdale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mrs_plymdale.md): A Middlemarch matron and mother of Ned Plymdale.
- [Ned Plymdale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/ned_plymdale.md): A young man who briefly courts Rosamond Vincy.
- [Mr. Wrench](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mr_wrench.md): A local surgeon and rival of Lydgate in Middlemarch.
- [Tantripp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/tantripp.md): Dorothea's maid and personal attendant.
- [Madame Laure](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/madame_laure.md): A French actress whom Lydgate was infatuated with in Paris.
- [Mr. Cadwallader](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/mr_cadwallader.md): The rector of Tipton, husband of Mrs. Cadwallader.
- [Sir Godwin Lydgate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/middlemarch_se/characters/sir_godwin_lydgate.md): Lydgate's wealthy uncle, a baronet who disapproves of his nephew's marriage.

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