Character guide

Sophia Baines

major

Also known as Sophia, Baines, Miss Sophia, Sophia Scales, Mrs. Scales, Mrs. Sophia Scales

Sophia chafes against the decorum of her mother's house, where even a wagonette departure becomes a public ceremony and daughters are managed like stock. Quick, proud, and secretly contemptuous of the settled futures laid out for her, she notices everything and forgives little. Her elopement with the charming commercial traveller Gerald Scales splits the novel's world in two and sets the measure against which her sister's quieter life will be read.

Constance Baines

major

Also known as Constance, Miss Constance, Mrs. Constance Povey, Constance Povey

Constance bends her head over the baby and the ledgers alike, the steady centre of a household that has lost its matriarch and its runaway daughter at once. Her love for Samuel Povey is real but decorous, conducted in whispers and cutting-out rooms, and her mother's silent refusal to acknowledge it leaves her quietly exposed. She carries the Baines name into middle age, and the novel's long middle belongs to her endurance.

Gerald Scales

major

Also known as Gerald, Mr. Gerald Scales, Mr. Scales, Scales, young Scales

Gerald Scales arrives in Bursley as a bright smile and a lively gesture, the sort of man a shopgirl is warned against and a proud daughter cannot resist. He is irreclaimably a fool and a prodigy of irresponsibleness, resentful of his wife's height and her dignity, ready to suggest she write home for money. His weakness is the engine of Sophia's long exile, and his presence haunts the novel even when he is absent from it.

Mrs. Baines

major

Also known as Mrs. John Baines, John Baines, the imperial Mrs. Baines, Old Mrs. Baines

Mrs. Baines presides over the Square with the correctness of a woman who has buried a husband and intends to bury the old order on her own terms. She manages Constance's romance by silence and Sophia's by vigilance, and her refusal to acknowledge what she sees is both a strategy and a fatigue. When she leaves the shop for Axe, her departure is the hinge on which the sisters' separate fates swing.

Samuel Povey

major

Also known as Samuel, Sam, Mr. Povey, Povey, the young Povey

Samuel Povey rises from assistant to son-in-law to proprietor, a man of small body and large, easily wounded vanity, capable of black and terrible furies when jealous. He loves Constance with a sensitive, tyrannic conscience, and he loves the shop with something closer to religion. His Annual Sale poster is the first crack in Mrs. Baines's old order, and his fussing devotion carries the family through its long decline.

Mr. Critchlow

supporting

Also known as Critchlow, Charles Critchlow, Charles, the redoubtable Charles

Mr. Critchlow has watched the Baineses through births, deaths, and elopements, dispensing pills and unwelcome opinions from behind his counter with equal indifference. He is the town's memory and its acid, a man who teases and is not teased, and whose dry verdicts carry more weight than anyone admits. His late marriage to Maria closes one of the novel's long, quiet loops and confirms how thoroughly the old generation has settled into its endings.

Cyril Povey

supporting

Also known as Cyril, Povey

Cyril grows up as the only child of the drapery, the heir everyone assumes will inherit the counter and the Square's good opinion. But he is his own person — gifted, self-possessed, and inclined to take his mother's devotion as a given. His choices, small and large, become the measure of how much of Constance's life was spent on a hope she could not control.

Dick Povey

supporting

Also known as Dick, young Dick Povey, Mr. Dick Povey

Dick arrives in the Baines orbit with more dash and appetite than the shop's sober world quite knows what to do with. He is affectionate, impulsive, and prone to schemes that outrun his means, a contrast to his cautious cousin Samuel. His fortunes and misfortunes ripple through the Povey household, giving the novel one of its most human measures of how quickly a life can turn.

Maggie Hollins

supporting

Also known as Maggie, Hollins, the vile Hollins, Maggie Hollins, old Maggie, young Maggie

Maggie has been an organism in the Baines house rather than a person — over forty, gawky, worn thin by service, her own wishes never consulted. When she tells Constance she is leaving to marry the fish-hawker she was engaged to back in '48, a separate and capricious individuality surfaces beneath the dehumanized drudge. Her quiet rebellion unsettles Constance's assumptions about class, marriage, and who deserves a life of their own.

Fossette

supporting

Also known as the celebrated Fossette, the infirm Fossette

Fossette is old, infirm, and thoroughly spoiled, sighing with the insincere, pity-seeking air of a pet who knows exactly how to work her mistresses. She and the jealous Spot turn the parlour into a small theatre of canine grievance, while Sophia and Constance kneel to doctor her and whisper about servants. In the sisters' late-life household, the dog's ailments and the household's tensions become one continuous texture of care, irritation, and time.

Monsieur Chirac

supporting

Also known as Chirac, Mr. Chirac, The little Chirac

Chirac is the sincere, comfortingly gentle Frenchman in Gerald's bohemian circle, forever pronouncing his adjectives with enthusiasm and proposing that one attend a guillotining to observe oneself. He moves through Paris with a casualness that astonishes Sophia — trains caught by seconds, plans made over coffee, old clothes donned for a journey to Auxerre. Through him Sophia glimpses a world where nothing is timetabled a week in advance, and where kindness and improvidence live in the same man.

Madame Foucault

supporting

Also known as Foucault, Madame, the Foucault, the ageing feckless Madame Foucault

Madame Foucault is disfigured by time and habit, half prostrate before Sophia in gratitude when the younger woman proposes they share the boarding-house and its profits. She is sincere, impractical, and doomed to be the toy of chance; a lover's return undoes her resolves within days. Her partnership with Sophia is a strange, almost didactic arrangement — Christian charity, mutual need, and two very different kinds of woman learning what they can from each other.

Amy Bates

minor

Also known as Amy

A servant in the Baines household; loyal and hardworking.

Lily Holl

minor

Also known as Lily, Miss Lily Holl, Miss Lily, Holl, Miss Holl

A young woman who works in the Baines shop and later marries.

Miss Insull

minor

Also known as Maria Insull

A shop assistant at Baines's; prim and efficient.

Daniel Povey

minor

Also known as Daniel, Mrs. Daniel Povey, the great Daniel, Cousin Daniel

Samuel Povey's brother; a successful businessman in London.

Aunt Harriet

minor

Also known as Harriet, Mrs. Maddack, Harriet Maddack, Mrs. Harriet Maddack

Sister of Mrs. Baines; a kind, conventional woman.

Mr. Boldero

minor

Also known as Mr. Till Boldero, Boldero, a Boldero, Uncle Boldero

An elderly friend of the Baines family; a solicitor.

Madame Laurence

minor

Also known as Laurence, the imperturbable Laurence

A Frenchwoman who runs a pension in Paris.

Fan

minor

A young woman briefly involved with Dick Povey.

William Clews Mericarp

minor

Also known as the late William Clews Mericarp Esq, Mericarp

A deceased local notable mentioned in the story.

Mr. Peel-Swynnerton

minor

Also known as Peel, Matthew Peel-Swynnerton, Swynnerton, Matthew, Matt, Mr. Peel - Swynnerton

A young artist and friend of Cyril Povey.

Jacqueline

minor

Also known as Usually Jacqueline

A maid at the Pension Frensham in Paris.

Maria Critchlow

minor

Also known as Marie, Maria

Mr. Critchlow's wife; a quiet, long-suffering woman.

Mr. Baines

minor

Also known as old Mr. Baines, a Baines, The Baines

Deceased father of Sophia and Constance; a former draper.

Maud

minor

A friend of Constance's youth.

M. Carlier

minor

Also known as Carlier

A Frenchman who frequents the Pension Frensham.

Aunt Maria

minor

Also known as Maria

Another aunt of the Baines sisters.

Rivain

minor

A French artist and acquaintance of Chirac.

Mary

minor

Also known as the mild Mary

A servant in the Baines household.

M. Niepce

minor

Also known as Niepce, old Niepce

An elderly Frenchman at the Pension Frensham.

Hortense Schneider

minor

Also known as Hortense

A famous French actress mentioned in passing.

Dr. Harrop

minor

Also known as Harrop, old Harrop, The venerable Harrop, Old Dr. Harrop, young Harrop

The family doctor in Bursley.

Reverend Archibald Jones

minor

Also known as Archibald Jones, Archibald

A clergyman in Bursley.

Claudine Jacquinot

minor

Also known as Claudine

A French maid in Sophia's Paris household.

Miss Baines

minor

An unmarried relative of the Baines family.

Jennie

minor

Also known as Miss Jennie

A young woman in Bursley.

Mr. Brindley

minor

Also known as Brindley

A local tradesman in Bursley.

James Boon

minor

Also known as Boon, Jim Boon

A local character in Bursley.

Rose Bennion

minor

Also known as Bennion, Rose

A young woman in Bursley.

Young Lawton

minor

Also known as young Lawton, Mr. Lawton

A young man in Bursley.

Edward Allman

minor

Also known as Allman, Young Edward Allman, young Allman, Young Allman

A young man in Bursley.

Mr. Chawner

minor

A local businessman in Bursley.

Mrs. Frensham

minor

Also known as Frensham

Proprietress of the Pension Frensham in Paris.

Mr. Hollins

minor

Also known as Hollins

Maggie Hollins's husband; a violent man.

Monsieur Cerf

minor

A Jewish merchant in Paris.

Elizabeth Chetwynd

minor

Also known as Elizabeth, Miss Chetwynd, the elder Miss Chetwynd, Miss Aline Chetwynd

A friend of Constance's later in life.

Aimée

minor

A French maid in Sophia's household.

Mr. Yardley

minor

Also known as a certain Mr. Yardley

A customer at the Baines shop.

Mr. Holl

minor

Also known as Holl, Alderman Holl

Father of Lily Holl; a local alderman.

Richard Povey

minor

A relative of the Povey family.

Mr. Frank Harris

minor

A journalist and editor mentioned in the story.

Mrs. Plover

minor

A neighbor of the Baines family.

Sylvain

minor

A French acquaintance of Chirac.

Mr. Shawcross

minor

A local businessman in Bursley.

Reverend Mr. Murley

minor

Also known as Mr. Murley

A clergyman in Bursley.

Mrs. Chatterley

minor

A customer at the Baines shop.

Judge Lindley

minor

A judge mentioned in the story.

Payenneville

minor

Also known as The celebrated Payenneville

A French chef mentioned in Paris.

Diane

minor

A Frenchwoman mentioned in Paris.