# The Pit — Character guide

> Key figures in The Pit by Frank Norris.

- [Laura Dearborn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/laura_dearborn.md): Laura Dearborn arrives in Chicago from a narrow New England upbringing and finds herself the still center of a social whirl — the Cresslers' steps, Corthell's studio, Jadwin's trotters. She manages Landry with a lifted f
- [Laura Jadwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/laura_jadwin.md): Married and emancipated from her New England horizon, Laura drifts through operas, drives, and a mission-school Easter festival without asking what consequences will follow. Jadwin overwhelms her with the same aggressive
- [Curtis Jadwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/curtis_jadwin.md): Jadwin drives over to the Cresslers' nightly, times his team with a stopwatch, and enlists Mrs. Cressler as an auxiliary in his pursuit of Laura. His addresses carry the vehemence of a market raid, leaving her no room fo
- [Landry Court](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/landry_court.md): Landry hovers half in and half out of the Cresslers' vestibule shadow, penitent after some unnamed offense and desperate for Laura's smile. She manages him with a lifted finger, addressing him by his last name to signal 
- [Page Dearborn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/page_dearborn.md): Page accompanies Laura on the Cresslers' steps, thrumming her mandolin while the older men circle, her boyish figure and grey-blue eyes still deepening toward a maturity her form hasn't caught up with. She primly declare
- [Samuel Gretry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/samuel_gretry.md): Gretry belongs to the tight circle of brokers and businessmen around Jadwin, his fortunes rising and falling with the wheat market's tides. When his house suspends, eighteen other Chicago firms fail the next day, and the
- [Mrs. Cressler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/mrs_cressler.md): Laura Dearborn's Chicago patroness, whose opera box and dinner table open the city's social world to two orphaned sisters from the East.
- [Sheldon Corthell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/sheldon_corthell.md): A painter whose studio talk of art and beauty offers Laura a rival vision of life to the brute force of the grain trade.
- [Aunt Wess](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/aunt_wess.md): An elderly relative of the Dearborns, living with them.
- [Mr. Cressler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/mr_cressler.md): A veteran grain dealer who has seen the pit ruin better men, and who watches his friend Jadwin's rise with unspoken dread.
- [C. H. Crookes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/c_h_crookes.md): A wheat trader and associate of Jadwin in the Pit.
- [Hargus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/hargus.md): An old wheat trader, often seen in the Pit.
- [Charles Cressler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/charles_cressler.md): Son of Mr. and Mrs. Cressler, a young man about town.
- [Dave Scannel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/dave_scannel.md): A rough, experienced wheat trader in the Pit.
- [Grossmann](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/grossmann.md): A Jewish wheat trader, often an obstacle to Jadwin.
- [Cressler Jadwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_se/characters/cressler_jadwin.md): A relative of Curtis Jadwin, possibly a cousin.

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