Sylvie and Bruno

Narrator

He is the courteous, slightly mischievous host who brings two impossible children into an ordinary evening party, then finds himself walking beside them through a world where frogs are an audience and soup is made of 'bits of things.' His easy good manners cover a genuine bewilderment: he answers for Sylvie when a guest's questions grow inconvenient, and watches Bruno's logic dismantle adult conversation with quiet delight. Because he belongs fully to neither world, he is the reader's only reliable guide through Carroll's doubled story.

Bruno

Bruno is the younger half of the fairy pair, a boy who stages Shakespeare for frogs, feeds them Birthday-Feast soup they refuse to open their mouths for, and treats every adult question as an invitation to mischief. He clings to Sylvie with fierce possessiveness — 'She are my very mine!' — even as he torments her with riddles she cannot pronounce. His scrambled grammar and unanswerable logic make him the book's engine of comedy, but his stubborn tenderness toward his sister is what gives the fairy scenes their warmth.

Sylvie

Sylvie is Bruno's elder sister and the patient counterweight to his chaos: she reminds him not to say 'a mile or three,' keeps the frog audience facing forward, and confesses to the narrator that Bruno 'does ask such hard questions.' Yet her composure slips — she loses all grammar in her confusion when scolding him before a stranger, and she cannot pronounce 'umbrella-sting.' Her watchful care for Bruno and her quiet dignity among adults make her the moral center of the fairy chapters, the one who keeps the make-believe from tipping into mere noise.

Arthur Forester

Arthur is the narrator's friend, Lady Muriel's suitor, and a physician whose calling repeatedly pulls him away from the company he loves. When fishermen summon him to a town where a doctor has already died, he tells Muriel plainly that it means death — yet goes, because he is 'called.' His willingness to marry her at eight the next morning before leaving gives the novel its sharpest image of love braced against duty. He matters because his choices force the other characters to decide what they truly value.

Lady Muriel Orme

Lady Muriel moves easily among the Earl's guests, teasing Eric, soothing Bruno, and listening to the narrator with genuine attention. Her small evasions — a glove that suddenly needs fastening, a hasty 'Don't puzzle the child!' — reveal a woman managing a courtship she has not fully consented to. She is beloved by Arthur and pursued by Eric Lindon, and her struggle to choose between duty, feeling, and self-knowledge anchors the novel's real-world plot. Her shudder at news of the epidemic shows how much she has at stake in Arthur's dangerous vocation.

Eric Lindon

Eric Lindon appears first as the Honorable Captain, a man who turns a railway platform into a stage and jokes about working his way up from waiter to housekeeper while glancing at Lady Muriel. He is Arthur's rival for her hand, and the narrator greets his arrival with barely disguised bitterness. Yet his later conduct — returning to a plague-stricken town to carry out a dying man — complicates any easy judgment. He matters because the novel asks whether charm and sacrifice can belong to the same man.