# The Quest of the Silver Fleece — Character guide

> Key figures in The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W. E. B. Du Bois.

- [Zora Cresswell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/zora_cresswell.md): Zora begins as a wild, barefoot girl living in the swamp, then becomes a servant in the Cresswell household and a student under Miss Smith. When Helen Cresswell carelessly tosses her a Paris gown, Zora hides it away, sen
- [Bles Alwyn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/bles_alwyn.md): Bles arrives in Washington hungry for the world of well-dressed, self-possessed Black men and women he has never seen before, and quickly attaches himself to Senator Smith's orbit. But his sudden success crumbles when a 
- [Harry Cresswell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/harry_cresswell.md): Harry is the polished heir to the Cresswell estate, courting Mary Taylor with flowers chosen to match her mood and a confession of past sins that wins her heart. He blames Elspeth's cabin for his youthful ruin and presen
- [Mary Taylor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mary_taylor.md): Mary Taylor is the white schoolteacher whose independence and unwomanly notions both pique and unsettle Harry Cresswell. Warned by a prophecy that she will marry him but be destroyed if she does, she nonetheless yields t
- [Miss Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/miss_smith.md): Miss Smith is the pale, gray-haired teacher whose cottage becomes Zora's second home and whose office becomes a schoolroom for new ways of living. She listens to Zora's dream of the Silver Fleece with a New Englander's b
- [Colonel Cresswell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/colonel_cresswell.md): Colonel Cresswell is the old Southern landowner whose credit and stubbornness carried the cotton corner through, and who now warms to Northern capital while still scorning the Taylors as social inferiors. He grows proud 
- [Mrs. Vanderpool](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mrs_vanderpool.md): Mrs. Vanderpool moves through Lake George society with the ease of someone who finds it all rather a joke, collecting interesting people like Mary Taylor and taking a casual interest in Zora's schooling. Her charm concea
- [Mrs. Harry Cresswell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mrs_harry_cresswell.md): Mary Cresswell returns South ahead of her husband, hiding a quarrel behind the excuse of ill health, and finds herself leaning on Bles Alwyn as her only confidant. When she realizes how the intimacy might be read, she fl
- [Mrs. Grey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mrs_grey.md): Mrs. Grey collects causes and college girls the way other women collect china, and her interest in Negro education is sincere but easily steered. John Taylor coaches his sister Mary to 'go easy' with her, so that Mrs. Gr
- [John Taylor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/john_taylor.md): John Taylor watches the mill trust consolidate and writes to Easterly about cutting wages and scaring Northern spinners with 'a vision of niggers in the mills.' He coaches Mary on what to believe before Mrs. Grey talks t
- [Mr. Easterly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mr_easterly.md): Easterly comes down from New York to align Southern votes behind the Cotton Inspection Bill and to kill or gut the Child Labor Bill, treating Congress as an extension of the trust. He offered Mrs. Vanderpool her husband'
- [Mr. Teerswell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mr_teerswell.md): Teerswell sits with Easterly and Senator Smith, weighing how to offset Todd's 'foolishness' and slip the Cotton Inspection Bill through on Southern votes. He belongs to the circle that finds Alwyn's Treasurer nomination 
- [Senator Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/senator_smith.md): A white politician involved in the national political scene.
- [Sam Stillings](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/sam_stillings.md): Stillings moves through the world of commerce and politics where the cotton crop is currency and Black labor is the machinery that runs it. He is the kind of man who works through others, pulling strings from behind a de
- [Mr. Charles Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mr_charles_smith.md): A white politician and associate of Senator Smith.
- [Elspeth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/elspeth.md): Elspeth lives at the edge of the swamp in a cabin that is part refuge and part warning, a figure of half-remembered African traditions and hard-won survival. She is wary of the white world's charity and suspicious of the
- [Helen Cresswell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/helen_cresswell.md): A young white woman, possibly a relative of the Cresswells.
- [Little Emma](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/little_emma.md): A young Black girl in the community.
- [The Judge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/the_judge.md): A local judge who presides over legal matters.
- [Robert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/robert_bertie.md): A young man, possibly a suitor or friend of a main character.
- [Aunt Rachel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/aunt_rachel.md): An older Black woman in the community.
- [Mr. Tolliver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/mr_tolliver.md): A white man, possibly a politician or lawyer.
- [St. John Cresswell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/st_john_cresswell.md): A member of the Cresswell family.
- [Jim Sykes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/jim_sykes.md): A Black man in the community, possibly a worker.
- [Carrie Wynn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_quest_of_the_silver_fleece_se/characters/carrie_wynn.md): A young woman, possibly a friend of Zora's.

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