# The Water-Babies — Character guide

> Key figures in The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley.

- [Tom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/tom.md): Tom begins as Grimes's abused apprentice, sent up flues too narrow for anyone larger, until a wrong turn through a rich house's chimney sets him running for his life. Reborn in the water, he is fearless, curious, and qui
- [Mr. Grimes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/mr_grimes.md): Grimes is the novel's first portrait of adult vice: he beats his apprentice, poaches salmon, and treats the world as something to be taken. When Tom, as a water-baby, returns to the pool where Grimes fell, he half-expect
- [Ellie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/miss_ellie.md): Ellie is the child of the great house whose chimney Tom tumbles down, and though she is a hundred times his size, he recognizes her instantly as kindred — a little girl, not a creature of another order. She is the first 
- [Sir John Harthover](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/sir_john_harthover.md): Sir John is the novel's picture of the honest English gentleman — a man of property, game, and propriety whose world Tom literally falls into by accident. When Tom bursts out of the flue and escapes, it is Sir John's est
- [Mother Carey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/mother_carey.md): Mother Carey is the quiet sovereign of the novel's moral universe, the figure the other fairies answer to and the one who reads the Waterproof Gazette each morning to keep track of her charges. She is not warm in the way
- [Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/mrs_bedonebyasyoudid.md): Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid is the novel's most unsettling authority: her name is her law, and she applies it without sentiment, giving sweet things to good children and unpleasant ones to the naughty, always in precise propor
- [Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/mrs_doasyouwouldbedoneby.md): She belongs to the fairy hierarchy that governs the river world, the counterpart to the stern Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, and her name is her law: treat others as you would be treated. Where Tom arrives raw from chimney-sweep
- [The Doasyoulikes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/the_doasyoulikes.md): A lazy tribe of people who do whatever they please and suffer the consequences.
- [Cousin Cramchild](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/cousin_cramchild.md): A pedantic and overbearing relative who lectures others on education.
- [Epimetheus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/epimetheus.md): A figure from Greek myth who appears in the narrative's allegorical sections.
- [Prometheus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/prometheus.md): A Titan from Greek mythology referenced in the story's moral lessons.
- [Mr. Lobster](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/valiant_mr_lobster.md): A brave lobster who interacts with Tom underwater.
- [Professor Owen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/professor_owen.md): A real-life scientist mentioned in the book's commentary.
- [The Baltas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/the_baltas.md): A group of people referenced in the story's moral allegory.

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