# Point Counter Point — Character guide

> Key figures in Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley.

- [Philip Quarles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/philip_quarles.md): A novelist and intellectual, central to the novel's exploration of ideas and relationships.
- [Walter Bidlake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/walter_bidlake.md): A sensitive young writer torn between his mistress and his wife.
- [Elinor Quarles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/elinor_quarles.md): Philip's wife, struggling with her marriage and her own desires.
- [Spandrell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/spandrell.md): A cynical and destructive figure who seeks meaning through violence.
- [Lucy Tantamount](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/lucy_tantamount.md): A beautiful and amoral socialite who toys with men's affections.
- [John Bidlake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/john_bidlake.md): A famous painter and Walter's father, a domineering patriarch.
- [Everard Webley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/everard_webley.md): Webley commands the Brotherhood of British Freemen, a paramilitary movement whose leader is described by Rampion's circle as a man who preaches that 'man is a fighting animal' while the world grows tamer. He is drawn to 
- [Marjorie Carling](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/marjorie_carling.md): Marjorie left her husband to live with Walter, but Carling's Christian scruples and quiet sadism have denied her a divorce, leaving her socially exposed and dependent on a man whose affection is visibly dying. Pregnant a
- [Mark Rampion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/mark_rampion.md): Rampion holds court at the novel's dinner tables, denouncing factories, Christianity, science, and respectability as forces that 'suck the life out of' the modern soul, while his wife Mary borrows his opinions and laughs
- [Illidge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/illidge.md): Illidge works in science but moves on the edges of the literary set, leaning against pillars at parties with a contempt he cannot quite carry off given his small, jerky frame and sandy complexion. He confesses to Walter 
- [Dennis Burlap](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/dennis_burlap.md): Burlap presides over the Literary World with a weekly gospel of 'believing in Life,' a phrase Walter finds both ubiquitous and meaningless, and he conducts interviews with Tolstoyan impertinence, asking candidates whethe
- [Beatrice Gilray](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/beatrice_gilray.md): Beatrice moves through the novel's social circles as an object of shifting attentions, becoming involved first with Walter and then with Spandrell, whose cadaverous charm and cynical philosophy she must reckon with. Her 
- [Susan Paley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/susan_paley.md): Susan Paley exists on the margins of the novel's glittering social world, married to the editor John Burlap and enduring a life of quiet, unglamorous devotion. Her religious faith and nervous sensibility make her acutely
- [Sidney Quarles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/sidney_quarles.md): Sidney Quarles was once the golden boy of his university — handsome, eloquent, and universally expected to rise to greatness — but thirty-five years later he is a portly, self-satisfied failure who ruined his father's su
- [Old Mr. Quarles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/old_mr_quarles.md): Philip's grandfather, a senile and lecherous old man.
- [Lord Edward Tantamount](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/lord_edward_tantamount.md): Lord Edward Tantamount is Lucy's father and a man of immense fortune who has retreated from public life into a private world of scientific obsession, cultivating a reputation for ferocity to keep intruders at bay. His ma
- [Lady Edward Tantamount](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/lady_edward_tantamount.md): Lucy's mother, a society hostess.
- [Miss Fulkes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/miss_fulkes.md): The Quarles family governess, devoted to the children.
- [Mary Rampion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/mary_rampion.md): Mark Rampion's wife, a supportive and practical partner.
- [Gladys Helmsley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/gladys_helmsley.md): A young woman who works for Burlap and becomes his mistress.
- [Mrs. Quarles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/mrs_quarles.md): Sidney Quarles's wife and Philip's mother.
- [Mrs. Bidlake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/mrs_bidlake.md): John Bidlake's wife and Walter's mother.
- [Willie Weaver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/willie_weaver.md): A young man who works for Burlap and is in love with Beatrice.
- [Ethel Cobbett](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/ethel_cobbett.md): Miss Cobbett's sister, a minor character.
- [General Knoyle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/general_knoyle.md): Mrs. Knoyle's late husband, a military man.
- [Hugo Brockle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/hugo_brockle.md): A friend of the Tantamounts, a minor aristocrat.
- [Rachel Quarles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/point_counter_point_se/characters/rachel_quarles.md): Sidney Quarles's first wife, deceased before the novel begins.

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