# The Marrow of Tradition — Character guide

> Key figures in The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt.

- [Dr. William Miller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/dr_miller.md): Miller has spent his inheritance founding a hospital and training school in Wellington, choosing to serve his people rather than flee to the freer North. He moves easily among white colleagues like Dr. Burns, who calls h
- [Sandy Campbell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/sandy_campbell.md): Sandy's contumacy over a cakewalk scandal has turned his own church into a jury of half-a-dozen preachers who send him to 'spiritual Coventry,' a loss he feels as keenly as any social club exile. Tom Delamere's mocking c
- [Mrs. Carteret](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/mrs_carteret.md): Mrs. Carteret manages her home with the same severity she applies to servants—discharging a nurse merely for having a sister who works for the Millers. She tends her aging aunt Polly Ochiltree with dutiful patience, thou
- [Tom Delamere](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/tom_delamere.md): Tom Delamere is the 'empty husk' of his grandfather's aristocratic line—graceful in parlors, craven before a fractious horse, and suspected of cheating at whist. He owes Ellis four dollars he'd rather forget, courts Clar
- [Mr. Ellis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/mr_ellis.md): Ellis arrives early to Clara's gatherings only to watch Delamere monopolize her smiles, and his Scotch thrift keeps exact account of the four dollars his rival owes him. As a newspaper man he sees what others miss—Delame
- [Old Mr. Delamere](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/old_mr_delamere.md): Old Mr. Delamere embodies the aristocratic ideal—courage, courtesy, scrupulous honor—that his grandson Tom merely mimics. He watches Tom and Clara at the window with an indulgent smile, musing on living on through his ch
- [Major Carteret](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/major_carteret.md): Major Philip Carteret edits the Morning Chronicle and moves through Wellington's best circles as a man of standing and influence. He is driven by a cold, paternalistic certainty that the old order must be restored, and h
- [Jerry Letlow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/jerry_letlow.md): Jerry works in Major Carteret's home and prides himself on being useful, unobtrusive, and on good terms with the white folks he serves. When a crowd sweeps him into the armed standoff at the hospital, his terror and his 
- [Polly Ochiltree](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/polly_ochiltree.md): Mrs. Ochiltree is the aunt who reared Olivia Carteret and whose fortune passes to her niece as a matter of course. In her last months she grows childish and lets slip fragments about a will that might divide the estate w
- [Captain George McBane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/captain_mcbane.md): Captain George McBane has money and a rough career behind him, but not the breeding that Wellington society demands. He cultivates Tom Delamere as a way into the Clarendon Club, having already caught Tom cheating at card
- [Mammy Jane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/mammy_jane.md): Mammy Jane dotes on the Carteret baby and speaks of him with the authority of a woman who nursed his mother and grandmother before him. She distrusts the younger, mission-schooled nurse and clings to the old ways of serv
- [Josh Green](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/josh_green.md): Josh Green has a personal score to settle with Captain McBane, who murdered his father and ruined his mother, but he keeps his head and organizes the defense of the hospital with the eye of a born commander. He refuses t
- [Janet Miller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/janet_miller.md): Janet Miller moves through Wellington as the educated, forgiving wife of a Black doctor, yet carries a lifelong grief she has never confessed even to her husband: she is the unacknowledged daughter of a white man whose l
- [Dr. Alvin Burns](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/dr_burns.md): A white doctor who assists Dr. Miller in a critical operation.
- [Miss Clara Pemberton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/miss_clara.md): Clara Pemberton sits at the center of a quiet rivalry between two suitors: the dashing Tom Delamere, whom Ellis judges mercilessly as unfit, and Ellis himself, too honorable to press his own case. Her marriageability is 
- [Dr. Price](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/dr_price.md): A white doctor who participates in the operation on Dodie.
- [Mr. Watson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/mr_watson.md): A white man who interacts with the black community.
- [Sister Olivia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/sister_olivia.md): A religious black woman, possibly related to the Miller family.
- [Julia Brown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/julia_brown.md): A black woman who appears in the narrative.
- [General Belmont](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/general_belmont.md): A white political figure involved in the white supremacy campaign.
- [Little Dodie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/little_dodie.md): The infant son of Major and Mrs. Carteret.
- [Mars John](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/mars_john.md): A white man referred to by black characters.
- [Olivia Carteret](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/olivia_carteret.md): Mrs. Carteret's full name, used rarely.
- [Aunt Jane Letlow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_marrow_of_tradition_se/characters/aunt_jane_letlow.md): An elderly black woman, possibly related to Jerry.

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