# The Homemaker — Character guide

> Key figures in The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

- [Stephen Knapp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/stephen_knapp.md): Stephen is the youngest Knapp, notorious for tantrums, cruelty, and a hard, cool stare that terrifies the neighborhood women. His mother is at her wit's end, but his father, Lester, discovers that steady attention and sh
- [Lester Knapp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/lester_knapp.md): Lester Knapp was always the impractical one at Willing's store, kind to delivery boys and useless at discipline, until a crippling illness leaves him at home while his wife goes out to work. He attacks the housework with
- [Helen Knapp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/helen_knapp.md): At thirteen, Helen is old enough to sense the secret griefs in her father's face, and bold enough to ask why he never wrote poetry himself. That moment of sympathy pierces Lester's long-buried shame and gives him a new s
- [Mattie Farnham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/mattie_farnham.md): Mattie Farnham comes to the Knapp house armed with sympathy and formulas about the nobility of homemaking, only to find Lester darning stockings and discoursing on cream sauce with unsettling authority. Her shock when he
- [Jerome Willing](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/jerome_willing.md): Jerome Willing prides himself on discipline and results, and Lester Knapp has always rubbed him the wrong way, shielding erring delivery boys, interfering with the natural order of things. When he hears that the crippled
- [Henry Knapp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/henry_knapp.md): Henry is one of the delicate Knapp children whose constant ailments worry the neighborhood and drain the household. He appears in quiet domestic moments, sleepy with his puppy, asking whether it is bedtime while his sist
- [Evangeline Knapp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/evangeline_knapp.md): Eva is the family's wage-earning daughter, the one whose curving smile and shining eyes grasp what her mother's promotion to Miss Flynn's place will mean for all of them. Her steady income and store-bought competence sit
- [Nell Willing](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/nell_willing.md): Nell moves through the orbit of the Willing family, a young woman whose place in that household makes her a natural point of comparison for the women around her. She is bound up with the Willings' domestic arrangements a
- [Father](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/father.md): A paternal figure referenced by the family.
- [Mother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/mother.md): A maternal figure in the family background.
- [The Doctor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/the_doctor.md): A physician who attends to the family.
- [Miss Flynn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/miss_flynn.md): A woman who interacts with the Knapp household.
- [Old Mrs. Anderson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/old_mrs_anderson.md): An elderly neighbor or acquaintance.
- [Teddy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/teddy.md): A child or young person in the story.
- [Mrs. Prouty](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/mrs_prouty.md): Wife of Mr. Prouty, a minor character.
- [Harvey Bronson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_homemaker_se/characters/harvey_bronson.md): A local man mentioned in the narrative.

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