# So Big — Character guide

> Key figures in So Big by Edna Ferber.

- [Selina DeJong](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/selina_dejong.md): Raised in hotel lobbies and boardinghouse parlors by a charming, itinerant gambler, Selina arrives in High Prairie as a schoolteacher with more imagination than practical sense. Marriage to a stoic Dutch farmer and years
- [Dirk DeJong](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/dirk_dejong.md): Dirk grows up well liked and effortlessly average, blessed with the social gift of listening while others talk, and everyone — especially his mother — reads a future into his fine, inclined head. He is neither brilliant 
- [Dallas O'Mara](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/dallas_omara.md): Dallas arrives in Dirk's office as a successful illustrator who still thinks nine dollars is a lot of money, and she unsettles him precisely because she sees life from the same angle his mother does. Her slow wide smile 
- [Roelf Pool](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/roelf_pool.md): Roelf is the Klaas Pool family's unlikely yield — a boy who read too much and saw too sharply for the flat, thrifty prairie that raised him, and who left it to become an artist. His sculpture The Seine scandalizes High P
- [Pauline](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/pauline.md): Paula — Pauline Arnold, later Paula Storm — is the glittering counterexample to Selina's grubbing life, a woman who trades beauty and charm for a lakefront estate, rose-brocade guest rooms, and a husband who telephones t
- [Pervus DeJong](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/pervus_dejong.md): Pervus DeJong is the plain, decent, unremarkable farmer Selina marries — a man of the soil in the most literal sense, whose wants are small and whose imagination is smaller. He works his worn-out truck farm without compl
- [Julie Hempel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/julie_hempel.md): Julie moves through Chicago's moneyed circles as the wife of Michael Arnold, a man her father privately scorns as too soft to smell the stockyards. She is amiable, literal, and a little blinkered — she nods wisely at Sel
- [Maartje Pool](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/maartje_pool.md): Roelf's mother, a hardworking and traditional Dutch farm woman.
- [Klaas Pool](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/klaas_pool.md): Roelf's father, a stern and conservative Dutch farmer.
- [Mattie Schwengauer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/mattie_schwengauer.md): A neighbor girl on the prairie who becomes a friend to Selina.
- [August Hempel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/august_hempel.md): Julie's wealthy and domineering father, a Chicago business magnate.
- [Simeon Peake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/simeon_peake.md): Selina's father, a cultured and somewhat impractical dreamer.
- [Widow Paarlenberg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/widow_paarlenberg.md): A wealthy widow in the Dutch community who takes an interest in Selina.
- [Chris Spanknoebel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/chris_spanknoebel.md): A hired hand on the DeJong farm who becomes a friend to the family.
- [Theodore A. Storm](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/theodore_storm.md): A wealthy young man who marries Pauline and becomes a patron of the arts.
- [Eugene Arnold](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/eugene_arnold.md): Julie's husband, a successful but somewhat dull businessman.
- [Jozina Pool](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/jozina_pool.md): Roelf's sister, a quiet and dutiful farm girl.
- [Geertje Pool](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/geertje_pool.md): Another sister of Roelf who marries and moves away.
- [General Emile Goguet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/general_goguet.md): A French general and art collector who befriends Roelf in Paris.
- [Meena Bras](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/meena_bras.md): A young woman from the Dutch community who works as a servant.
- [Jan Snip](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/jan_snip.md): A Dutch farmer and neighbor on the prairie.
- [Ethelinda Quinn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/so_big_se/characters/ethelinda_quinn.md): A teacher at the school where Selina works.

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