# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by E. M. Forster.

- [Harold](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/harold.md): A man of mysterious former greatness who awakens beside Sicilian ruins and claims, with unnerving calm, to have lived here before.
- [Miss Raby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/miss_raby.md): A seasoned traveler who returns to a mountain village after twenty years, determined to make an old guide remember the man he used to be.
- [Vashti](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/vashti.md): A devoted worshipper of the Machine who cannot bear to look at the tunnel her own son has dared to question.
- [Michael](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/michael.md): A successful author and gentle father who watches his family drift from him even as he tries, with careful kindness, to hold them close.
- [Mildred Peaslake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mildred_peaslake.md): A romantic young woman who seizes on her lover's strange claim of a past life, only to find her own certainty crumbling beneath her.
- [Miss Beaumont](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/miss_beaumont.md): A guileless young woman engaged to a wealthy landowner, whose simple delight in counting trees masks a quiet resistance to being managed.
- [the boy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/the_boy.md): He wins two return tickets to a strange destination and spends the journey racing Achilles, gossiping with Mrs. Gamp, and disappointing his cultured guardian, Mr. Bons, who had hoped for a more reverent companion. Where 
- [Mr. Lucas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mr_lucas.md): Tired of being managed by his daughter Ethel and lectured by Mrs. Forman, he rides ahead to a plane-tree khan and savors the small freedom of arriving first. Forty years of longing for Greece have left him stiff, forgetf
- [Colonel Leyland](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/colonel_leyland.md): Present among the English visitors during Eustace's strange illness, Leyland intervenes at odd moments, curious where others are indifferent and detached where feeling runs high. He presses Gennaro about what Eustace mea
- [Mr. Harcourt Worters](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mr_harcourt_worters.md): Harcourt rescues Miss Beaumont from a stream, orders her to bed, and calmly arranges the removal of Mr. Ford, all while explaining the construction of bridges and completing his tidy circle of improvements. He is offende
- [Mr. Bons](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mr_bons.md): Trembling before the cadaverous driver and the immortals beyond, Bons insists on reverence, meditation on beauty, and proper conduct, while the boy chatters about Dickens and races with Achilles. He confiscates the retur
- [Gennaro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/gennaro.md): Gennaro appears in a borrowed waiter's suit with a dirty fisherman's cap, scoops the boy Eustace into his arms, and later tries, with difficulty, to explain what the child means about not understanding men. He is at once
- [Eustace](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/eustace.md): Eustace lodges at a Ravello hotel with his two aunts, who think him delicate; the narrator, a plain, self-assured Englishman, finds him indescribably repellent and blames his aunts for coddling him. He neither plays nor 
- [Feo Ginori](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/feo_ginori.md): Feo Ginori moves through life with a sweetness so full it cannot brood over death, caring for the universe, for civilization, and for his fellow-men. He falls in love with a woman whose hardness of truth-telling he comes
- [Sir Edwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/sir_edwin.md): Sir Edwin has weathered the death of his wife and the flight of his son, and in old age he has merged his personal voice into the great voice of tradition. His enemies claim to see through him, but no impartial observer 
- [Ethel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/ethel.md): A female character with a limited but named presence.
- [Mr. Andrews](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mr_andrews.md): Mr. Andrews lived a beneficent and honourable life, educated at Winchester and Oxford, married with four children, and on the verge of a knighthood when he died. Ascending toward the Judgment Seat, he falls into conversa
- [Ford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/ford.md): Ford is a young man of practically no money of his own, dependent on Mr. Worters for his career, and given to recording his irreverent observations in a notebook he labels practically private. When the label comes unstuc
- [Jack Ford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/jack_ford.md): Jack Ford studies under Mr. Inskip alongside Miss Beaumont, and his greater knowledge makes the shared arrangement feel unfair to her. He keeps a notebook of poems and observations that Mr. Worters was never meant to see
- [Mr. Leyland](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mr_leyland.md): A character who appears in a story, sometimes found asleep.
- [Miss Eliza Dimbleby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/miss_eliza_dimbleby.md): A female character, sometimes called Elizabeth, with a minor role.
- [Lady Peaslake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/lady_peaslake.md): A titled female character, mother of Mildred Peaslake.
- [Mr. Sandbach](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mr_sandbach.md): A kind gentleman who appears in a story about a panic.
- [Rose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/rose.md): A female character, sometimes called Poor Rose, with a minor role.
- [Emily](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/emily.md): A female character with a limited but named presence.
- [Kuno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/kuno.md): Kuno belongs to a world where every need is answered by buttons and the Book, yet he has done the unthinkable: walked on the earth's surface without a permit, using a way of his own. His mother Vashti shrinks from his di
- [Evelyn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/evelyn.md): A female character with a limited but named presence.
- [Signora Cantù](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/signora_cantu.md): An Italian female character, likely a local resident.
- [Mrs. Worters](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mrs_worters.md): An older female character, mother of Harcourt Worters.
- [Janet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/janet.md): A female character with a limited but named presence.
- [Lilian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/lilian.md): A female character with a limited but named presence.
- [the Faun](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/the_faun.md): The Faun haunts the beech copse and Roman earthworks above a village where the narrator, a facetious clergyman, has arranged a tea outing for his fiancee Emily and her mother. The narrator admits he has been a fool, taki
- [Mrs. Forman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mrs_forman.md): A female character with a limited but named presence.
- [Miss Mary Robinson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/miss_mary_robinson.md): A female character with a limited but named presence.
- [Mr. Inskip](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/mr_inskip.md): A male character with a limited but named presence.
- [Dear Tommy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/dear_tommy.md): A male character, often addressed as Dear Tommy.
- [the Machine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/the_machine.md): The Machine is both infrastructure and object of worship: it delivers food, music, and communication to every cell-like room, and its Book is cited as final authority. When Kuno claims it is stopping, Vashti laughs — but
- [the Siren](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters/the_siren.md): The Siren belongs to a tale told of a stream that has changed its course and a place now in ruins, where a father and daughter narrowly escaped death. She is the object of a quest that pulls characters away from the safe

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_13_se/characters