The Getting of Wisdom · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson.
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Laura Rambotham
major
Also known as Laura, Miss Laura, II Laura, Miss Laura Tweedle Rambotham, Miss Rambotham, Daer Laura, little Laura, Laura Rambotham, drab little Laura, VIII Laura, History Laura, Laura
Laura Rambotham is the novel's restless center: a clever, observant girl from a struggling country home who is sent to a Melbourne ladies' college and finds its hierarchies far harder to master than any lesson. Her defining tension is between the rich inner life she feeds on books and the blunt, self-defeating honesty she uses on the girls around her, a habit that makes her both pitiable and prickly. Her early missteps and small triumphs at school set the terms of the whole story: how a girl like Laura learns, or fails to learn, the getting of wisdom.
Pin
supporting
Also known as Only Pin, little Pin, confused Pin
Pin is the little sister Laura leaves behind in the bush, and the holidays reunite them with a shock: the child has grown spindly, freckled, and, to Laura's eye, downright hideous. Where Laura is proud and sensitive, Pin is practical, affectionate, and cheerfully immune to insults about her looks, a contrast that exposes Laura's own vanities. Pin matters because she keeps the country world alive in the novel's middle stretch, reminding Laura, and the reader, of the plain, unglamorous love she is trading for school society.
Evelyn Souttar
supporting
Also known as Evelyn, Evvy
Evelyn Souttar moves through the school with the assurance of money and good looks, and Laura, hungry for a model, fastens onto her as an idol. The relationship carries the story's central ache: Laura's longing to be chosen by someone she considers superior, set against Evelyn's careless readiness to drop her. Evelyn matters because she embodies the social world Laura is trying to enter, and the pain she deals is part of what Laura must survive on the way to any real wisdom.
Mother
supporting
Also known as Nietzsche Mother, Mother'll
Mother is the hard-pressed widow holding the bush household together, stitching Laura's school dress herself and snapping at her daughter's defiance with the exhaustion of a woman who has sewn all day. Her relationship with Laura is tense and unsentimental: she corrects, she shakes, she sends her eldest away to be educated beyond her own means. She matters because she represents the sacrifice and the narrowness of home, the world Laura is both escaping and betraying as she climbs into school society.
Bob
minor
Also known as Robby, Mr. Robby
A young man who flirts with Laura during her visit home, representing romantic temptation.
Mrs. Gurley
supporting
Also known as altogether Mrs. Gurley, old Gurley
Mrs. Gurley is the presiding power of the ladies' college, the woman who escorts Laura into the dining room before fifty-five staring girls and whose bedroom sits conveniently above the piano where girls practise. Her manner is a study in controlled severity: a chill smile for the godmother, then the mask dropped the moment the door closes. She matters because she sets the institutional tone of Laura's school life, the surveillance and small humiliations against which Laura's private world of reading and dreaming must survive.
Tilly Macnamara
supporting
Also known as Macnamara, Tilly
Tilly Macnamara is the school's confident, boy-crazy type, wearing a stiff white collar and cuffs and swinging her shoulders atop a tightly laced waist as she and Laura go out to 'do the block' and meet a boy named Bob. She lends Laura a sash and dictates her hat, all bonhomie and self-absorption, and her friendship is as performative as her style. Tilly matters because she draws Laura into the social games of courtship and popularity, and because her eventual betrayal is one of the sharp lessons in what school society costs.
Miss Chapman
supporting
Also known as Elderly Miss Chapman, Only good old Chapman
Among the mistresses at the Ladies' College, Miss Chapman stands apart for the warmth she shows Laura, supervising evening lessons with a kindness the girl rarely meets elsewhere. Yet even her soft remark that little Laura is growing perky and lazy lands like a verdict, proof that Laura's cleverness is crumbling under scrutiny. Her quiet disappointment shadows Laura's early attempts to sharpen her wits, making the classroom a place where approval must be earned rather than assumed.
Maria Morell
supporting
Also known as Maria, May
Maria moves through the Ladies' College with an assurance Laura envies, her cleverness and cutting humour marking her as someone to reckon with among the girls. Where Laura is raw and impulsive, Maria is guarded and sardonic, and their friendship forms along an uneasy edge of admiration and rivalry. She becomes one of Laura's earliest lessons in how intelligence can be worn as armour, and how schoolgirl intimacy can curdle as quickly as it blooms.
Godmother
supporting
Laura's godmother holds the purse strings that lift her out of the family's cramped, shabby world and into the Ladies' College, an act of generosity that comes with invisible strings. Warmth is not her currency; duty and propriety are, and Laura feels the weight of being a charity child even as she benefits from the arrangement. Her presence hovers over Laura's school years as both opportunity and obligation, a reminder that the getting of wisdom is tangled up with being beholden to someone else's kindness.
Sarah
minor
The family's loyal servant who helps raise Laura and Pin.
Marina
minor
Also known as the unobservant Marina
A dreamy, artistic schoolgirl who shares Laura's love of literature.
Mary Pidwall
minor
Also known as Mary
A quiet, studious schoolgirl who becomes Laura's friend.
M. P.
minor
A mysterious, unnamed schoolgirl referred to only by initials in Laura's circle.
Lilith Gordon
minor
Also known as Gordon, Lilith
A glamorous, rebellious older girl who fascinates and intimidates Laura.
Cupid
minor
A mischievous schoolgirl known for her pranks and sharp tongue.
Chinky
minor
A schoolgirl with a foreign-sounding nickname, part of Laura's social set.
Miss Snodgrass
minor
A strict, humorless teacher at the school.
Miss Day
minor
A young, pretty teacher who is kind to the girls.
Inez
minor
A wealthy, fashionable schoolgirl who looks down on Laura.
Mr. Strachey
minor
Also known as Mr. and Mrs. Strachey, Mrs. Strachey
A local gentleman who hosts social events Laura attends.
Cousin Grace
minor
Laura's older cousin who visits and offers worldly advice.
Miss Isabella Shepherd
minor
Also known as Miss Isabella, Isabella
A teacher at the school, known for her piety and strictness.
Bertha Ramsay
minor
Also known as Bertha
A schoolgirl who becomes a close friend of Laura's.
Miss Zielinski
minor
A music teacher at the school, known for her eccentricity.
Dr. Pughson
minor
The school's doctor, called in for student illnesses.
Miss Hicks
minor
A teacher at the school, known for her sharp temper.
Little Frank
minor
Also known as Frank
A young boy who appears briefly in Laura's home life.
Kate Horner
minor
Also known as Kate
A schoolgirl who is part of Laura's social circle.
Leppie
minor
A schoolgirl with a nickname, part of Laura's cohort.
Lolo
minor
Also known as the birdlike Lolo
A delicate, bird-like schoolgirl who is a friend of Laura's.
Annie Johns
minor
Also known as Miss Johns, Miss Annie Johns, Annie
A plain, hardworking schoolgirl who is often teased.
Patrick O'Donnell
minor
Also known as O'Donnell
A young man who shows romantic interest in Laura.
Mr. Shepherd
minor
Also known as old Shepherd, thin, poorly-fed Mr. Shepherd
A local tradesman and father of a schoolgirl.
Lucy
minor
Also known as Lucy of Toorak, young Lucy
A wealthy schoolgirl from a prominent Melbourne family.
Peter
minor
A young man who works on the family property and flirts with Laura.
Joey
minor
Also known as Little Jo
A young boy, possibly a relative or neighbor of Laura's family.
Mr. Repton
minor
A visiting clergyman who gives a sermon at the school.
Mrs. Shepherd
minor
The wife of Mr. Shepherd, a local tradesman.
Georgy
minor
A young boy, possibly a relative of Laura's family.
Old Anne
minor
Also known as old Anne, Anne, Nana
An elderly servant in the Rambotham household.
Maggie
minor
Also known as Maisie
A schoolgirl who appears briefly in the narrative.
Uncle Tom
minor
Laura's uncle who visits the family occasionally.
Georgina
minor
A schoolgirl mentioned in passing as part of the group.
Robert
minor
A young man who appears briefly in Laura's social life.
Poppet
minor
A young child, possibly a sibling or neighbor of Laura's.
Miss Perrotet
minor
A teacher at the school, mentioned briefly.
Mrs. Paget
minor
A local woman who hosts a social gathering Laura attends.
Nelly Bristow
minor
A schoolgirl mentioned briefly in the narrative.
Jim Chapman
minor
Also known as Jim
A young man who appears briefly in Laura's social circle.