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Short Fiction · Character

Handsome Charlie

The younger Marston son, charming and quick with his fists, whose sudden inheritance of Gylingden sets brother against brother.

supporting

Also known as Charlie, Charles

First appearance: the village bully

As a supporting figure in Short Fiction, Handsome Charlie is not background color—the story leans on what they do once the chapter opens.

Charlie grew up in Gylingden Hall amid his father's coarse, quarrelsome hospitality, and he learned early how to pin a man to a wall and then shake his hand. When the old Squire's will disinherits the eldest son, Scroope, and leaves the estate to Charlie, the brothers' long-smoldering rivalry breaks into open fury. Charlie is the winning man who is almost as angry as the loser, and his uneasy triumph is the fault line along which the family's violence will run.

See Handsome Charlie in the village bullyBook page

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Character Web

27 connections

A slice of how Handsome Charlie sits in the book — open the reader for the full interactive map.

STSquire TobyOCOld CooperSMScroope MarstonGSGodfrey SchalkenSRSir Robert Ard…HCHandsome Charlie

Relationship types

  • Rivalry
  • Other

Character groups

  • Ghost story narrators

+22 more in the full Character Web

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Narrative arc

Story tension across the book — this chapter sits in Exposition.

SetupAftermathClimax
  • Setup
  • Escalation
  • Breaking point
  • Aftermath
  • Closing

This is the story's dramatic climax because it marks the psychological peak of the narrator's horror and the r…

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Relationships

Relationship notes

How these ties play out is in the reading companion — open the free preview.

See Handsome Charlie in the village bully
See Handsome Charlie in the village bully
Who is Handsome Charlie in Short Fiction?