# Mall Carke — Short Fiction character guide

> Mall Carke in Short Fiction by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Old Mall Carke, Mall, old Mall Carke, Mother Carke

**First appearance:** 0025-ii-the-fairies-in-the-castle

## Snapshot

An old woman steeped in fairy lore and local dread, whose whispered stories carry more weight in the neighborhood than any sermon or statute.

## Who they are

Old Mall Carke moves through the countryside as a keeper of the old tales, the kind of figure whose words are half-credited and half-feared by everyone who hears them. She is bound up with the fairy tradition that shadows the story's events, and her knowledge gives her a strange authority that ordinary folk cannot quite explain or dismiss. What she knows, and how she came to know it, quietly shapes the atmosphere of dread that surrounds the characters' fates.

## In the story

### [Laura Silver Bell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_31_se/chapters/laura-silver-bell)

The old wise woman and reputed witch who is tempted by a dark stranger and later attends Laura's supernatural childbirth.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_31_se/characters/mall_carke
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_31_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_31_se/characters