# Woodville — Short Fiction character guide

> Woodville in Short Fiction by Mary Shelley.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0000-a-tale-of-the-passions

## Snapshot

A poet of impossible beauty and childlike heart, untouched by vice until the world teaches him what disappointment costs.

## Who they are

Woodville is the poor clergyman's son on whom fortune has lavished every gift of mind and person, a poet whose presence seems haloed and whose simplicity keeps him ignorant of his own superiority. Because his station is moderate, he has been spared the cruelties that come with conferring favors, and so he believes in the divinity of genius without yet knowing the world's meanness. His early arc turns on that innocence: a man formed for love and admiration, beginning to learn that even the gods' favorites must pay for rising above their nature.

## In the story

### [IX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se/chapters/ix)

A poet of transcendent genius and beauty, son of a poor clergyman; becomes the narrator's friend but cannot fully console them due to the narrator's emotional deadness.

### [X](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se/chapters/x)

Woodville mourns the death of his beloved Elinor and attempts to console the narrator, sharing his poetic and philosophical views.

### [Chapter XI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se/chapters/xi)

Woodville refuses the narrator's suicide pact, offering a philosophical defense of life and hope, and persuades her to abandon her plan.

### [XII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se/chapters/xii)

Woodville bids farewell to the narrator, offering advice and promising affection before leaving to visit his ill mother.

### [Endnotes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se/chapters/endnotes)

Appears in later drafts; name changed from Herbert in revisions.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se/characters/woodville
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_38_se/characters