# The Voyage Out — Character guide

> Key figures in The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf.

- [Helen Ambrose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/helen_ambrose.md): Helen Ambrose moves through the ship and the South American hotel with an independence that unsettles the conventional English around her, offering Rachel books and unfiltered conversation instead of the insincerity she 
- [Terence Hewet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/terence_hewet.md): Terence Hewet arrives in Santa Marina as a writer among talkers, more interested in human beings than in the earth swept clean of them, and drawn to Rachel precisely for the impersonality her music produces. He works at 
- [Rachel Vinrace](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/rachel_vinrace.md): Rachel Vinrace has been raised among aunts and Bach, handling written sentences as if they were wooden objects and taking modern novels with a seriousness no one around her shares. When Richard Dalloway kisses her, she i
- [St. John Hirst](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/st_john_hirst.md): St. John Hirst argues politics with the men, needles Helen with complaints, and treats the South American expedition as a holiday that stubbornly refuses to become one. He is impatient with Hewet and Rachel's silent self
- [Mrs. Thornbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mrs_thornbury.md): Mrs. Thornbury seizes Rachel's arm to announce she guessed the match from the start, then folds the news into reminiscences of typhoid in Venice and the stricter courtships of her youth. She is endlessly kind and endless
- [Mrs. Flushing](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mrs_flushing.md): Mrs. Flushing joins the river expedition with an appetite for sensation, exclaiming over the hut where the explorer's body and notebook were found while her well-dressed husband supplies the facts. She befriends Rachel w
- [Miss Allan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/miss_allan.md): Miss Allan belongs to the floating colony of English visitors who shuttle between the Ambroses' villa and the hotel, one of those acquaintances whose presence makes Santa Marina feel like a transplanted drawing-room. She
- [Susan Warrington](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/susan_warrington.md): Susan has spent years as unpaid companion to her selfish old aunt, Mrs. Paley, and her engagement to Arthur Venning transforms her from drudge to bride with a handsome present in view. The change floods her with warmth t
- [Mrs. Dalloway](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mrs_dalloway.md): Mrs. Dalloway arrives on the ship in a stir of leather bags and compliments, a woman of a class where everything is specially arranged and everyone is known. Charming, worldly, and slightly theatrical, she turns her atte
- [Mr. Pepper](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mr_pepper.md): An elderly, pedantic scholar traveling with the Ambroses.
- [Arthur Venning](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/arthur_venning.md): Arthur is a conventional young Englishman whose courtship of Susan rescues her from years of being overlooked at her father's parsonage. His attentions are steady rather than passionate, and Susan spends her private hour
- [Ridley Ambrose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/ridley_ambrose.md): Ridley Ambrose is a classical scholar whose edition of Pindar matters more to him than the social life his wife manages around him. He grumbles about the washing of his shirts, about the bore Hughling Elliot, about seein
- [Willoughby Vinrace](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/willoughby_vinrace.md): Rachel's father, a shipowner who arranges the voyage.
- [Mr. Perrott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mr_perrott.md): A quiet, older gentleman who courts Miss Allan.
- [Mrs. Hughling Elliot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mrs_hughling_elliot.md): A gossipy, social-climbing passenger on the voyage.
- [Mr. Wilfrid Flushing](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mr_wilfrid_flushing.md): Mrs. Flushing's husband, a wealthy art collector.
- [Mrs. Chailey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mrs_chailey.md): The Ambroses' loyal, practical maid.
- [Mr. Bax](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/mr_bax.md): A clergyman who performs a wedding ceremony.
- [Dr. Lesage](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/dr_lesage.md): A French doctor consulted during Rachel's illness.
- [Evelyn Murgatroyd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/evelyn_murgatroyd.md): Evelyn Murgatroyd moves through the hotel in a whirl of crushes, causes, and sudden enthusiasms, from Alfred and Sinclair to a plan for abolishing prostitution within six months. She demands that Rachel join her Saturday
- [Richard Dalloway](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/richard_dalloway.md): A conservative politician who briefly visits the ship with his wife.
- [Hughling Elliot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/hughling_elliot.md): A pompous academic and husband of Mrs. Hughling Elliot.
- [Father Damien](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_voyage_out_se/characters/father_damien.md): A missionary mentioned in passing.

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