Character guide

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.