Character guide

Ernest Pontifex

major

Also known as Ernest, Mr. Pontifex, Master Ernest, the wretched Ernest, dear Ernest

Ernest grows up as the family's experiment in moral engineering, absorbing whatever jargon his elders approve and reproducing it as his own. His aunt Alethea watches him with affection and alarm, seeing a boy whose impulsiveness and eager trust in anyone who smiles at him will bring him many rude undeceptions. His slow education in seeing his parents clearly is the engine of the novel's early arc.

Christina Pontifex

major

Also known as Christina, Dearest Miss Christina, Christiana

Christina manages her household the way she would manage a stage, imagining applause as she flings her arms around her lionhearted husband and consigns Ernest to the reproaches of his conscience. Her vanity feeds on contradictory impressions of her son, so that his official purity and his suspected appetites can coexist comfortably in her mind. Her blend of piety and self-dramatization shapes the suffocating atmosphere Ernest must escape.

Theobald Pontifex

major

Also known as Theobald, Dear Theobald, the Rev. Theobald Pontifex, the inexorable Theobald

Theobald rules his household with cold correctness, restoring Ernest's watch while charging him for it in installments and keeping him closer to his holiday task as substitute for real reckoning. He is the sort of man whose noblest gesture is a refusal to act, and whose son learns to hate him with cordial, active clarity. His small tyrannies over money and merit money are the training ground for Ernest's long rebellion.

George Pontifex

supporting

Also known as Pontifex, Mr. Pontifex, old Mr. Pontifex, George, little George

George Pontifex presides over Paleham as a minor deity, dispensing penny loaves at funerals and roaring genially at meek relatives who are willing to be eaten. His grandchildren enjoy liberties his own children never had, provided they wipe their shoes and leave his organ pipes alone. His sudden crimson flush at the dinner table hints at the irritability beneath the star-of-Bethlehem benevolence, the family weather Ernest will inherit.

Alethea Pontifex

major

Also known as Alethea, Miss Alethea Pontifex, Miss Pontifex, Aunt Alethea

Alethea has loved the narrator for years without marrying him, and turns that clear-eyed affection onto Ernest, whose impulsiveness and conceit she reads better than anyone. When typhoid strikes, she summons her lawyer and arranges a secret trust so the boy can make his mistakes on his grandfather's money before inheriting hers. Her judgment of his character is the novel's quiet moral center.

Ellen

supporting

Also known as that lass Ellen, lass Ellen

Ellen enters Ernest's life as a lass, becomes his wife, and proves the barren task he is too obstinate to give up. Sober, she is the woman he first loved; drinking, she looks back longingly at the lawless freedom she had before respectability. Her relapse and his dogged loyalty drag him downhill toward the small shopkeeper's life, the crucible in which his earlier self is burned away.

Towneley

supporting

Towneley drifts through Cambridge and London with the instinctive polish Ernest can only gape at, and later stands by him in the police court as one of the few witnesses willing to speak for his character. He is not cruel, merely untroubled — his effortless success quietly indicts the anxious, self-thwarting striving of those around him. For Ernest, Towneley becomes the measure of everything he is not, and the friendship matters precisely because it offers no flattery, only the calm example of a man who never had to fight himself.

Pryer

supporting

Also known as LXI Pryer

Pryer befriends Ernest in London just as the young curate is most adrift, offering grand talk of a spiritual college and the flattering sense of being taken seriously by a man of the world. Ernest hands over his entire fortune on nothing but Pryer's paper promises, and even as the folly becomes plain he cannot quite believe his friend dishonourable. Pryer is the story's lesson in how easily a plausible man harvests the trust of someone who has never learned to tell friend from flatterer.

Mrs. Jupp

supporting

Also known as poor old Jupp, Mrs. Jupp the landlady, Poor old Jupp

Mrs. Jupp keeps lodgings and a knowing sympathy for the fallen; of all tasks a mortal woman might perform, coaxing out a young man's grief is the one she would relish most. Ernest, fresh from prison and frightened of the streets, resolves to confide in her, only to be intercepted by Ellen before he reaches her door. Her importance lies in that missed meeting: she represents the practical, unshockable kindness Ernest keeps almost finding, and the novel's quiet argument that such women understand more than the pious ever will.

Dr. Skinner

supporting

Also known as the famous Dr. Skinner of Roughborough, Skinner

Dr. Skinner rules Roughborough with pomp, excommunicating shops and boys alike, and when Theobald feeds him a list of Ernest's private remarks he turns on the informer and burns it rather than face a scandal. He is a pedant more than a tyrant, but his vanity makes him dangerous to any boy who embarrasses him. His overreaching punishment of Ernest wins the school's sympathy for the victim and sets the pattern of the novel: authority that wounds most where it means to correct.

Mrs. Pontifex

minor

Also known as old Mrs. Pontifex, John Pontifex, Mrs. John Pontifex

George Pontifex's wife and Ernest's grandmother.

Charlotte Pontifex

supporting

Also known as Charlotte, Miss Charlotte, Charlotte one

Charlotte grows up in the Pontifex household absorbing its self-righteous vocabulary whole, and she will inherit the family talent for condemning what she does not understand. Where Ernest is impulsive and easily undeceived, Charlotte is armoured in correctness, and the distance between them widens as his life goes wrong. She matters as the domestic face of the piety that shapes Ernest's childhood — the sister who will never forgive his good luck, exactly as Aunt Alethea predicted.

Mr. Hawke

minor

A schoolmaster at Roughborough who torments Ernest.

Joseph

minor

Also known as Joey, Joe King

A servant or acquaintance of the Pontifex family.

Mrs. Allaby

minor

Also known as Mr. Allaby, enthusiastic Mrs. Allaby, old Mr. Allaby

Christina's mother, a matchmaker for her daughters.

Mr. Shaw

minor

A lawyer or business associate of the Pontifex family.

Mrs. Cowey

minor

A neighbor or acquaintance of the Pontifexes.

Miss Maitland

minor

A young woman admired by Ernest.

Samuel Butler

supporting

Also known as Sam

Butler moves through the novel as confidant and witness, present at Cambridge, in the police court, and at the deathbed arrangements that will shape Ernest's future. He is fond of Ernest without being blind to him, and his commentary supplies the book's sceptical intelligence — amused by human folly, unsparing about clergymen and schoolmasters. His presence matters because it makes the story a remembered life rather than a mere case study, and because his affection for Ernest keeps the satire from turning merely cold.

Mrs. Skinner

minor

Also known as Skinner

Dr. Skinner's wife.

Badcock

minor

A schoolfellow or minor character at Roughborough.

Miss Snow

minor

Also known as Miss Emily Snow

A young woman associated with Ernest's London life.

Mrs. Thompson

minor

Also known as the Mrs. Thompson

A landlady or neighbor in London.

Holt

minor

Also known as Mr. Holt, a Mr. Holt

A tradesman or acquaintance of the Pontifexes.

Mr. Baxter

minor

Also known as Mrs. Baxter, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter

Neighbors or acquaintances of the Pontifex family.

Mrs. Jay

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or neighbor.

Mr. Fairlie

minor

Also known as a Mr. Fairlie

A minor acquaintance of the Pontifexes.

Mr. Overton

supporting

Also known as Overton

Overton moves through the novel as confidant, executor, and occasional rescuer, the steady eye through which the Pontifex generations are observed and quietly judged. A confirmed bachelor, he teases Ernest about having been 'inoculated for marriage' while himself dodging every entanglement, his detachment both a comic running joke and a moral vantage point. When Ernest's crisis arrives, it is to Overton's rooms in the Temple that he is carried, and it is Overton who arranges the practical aftermath, making him the story's indispensable witness and fixer.

Mr. Hughes

minor

A minor character, possibly a tradesman or neighbor.

Dr. Martin

minor

A doctor consulted by the Pontifex family.

Dawson

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or tradesman.

Eliza Allaby

minor

Also known as Elizabeth, Elizabeth Allaby

One of Christina's sisters.

Maria

minor

A servant in the Pontifex household.

Jack

minor

A minor acquaintance or servant in the story.

Gelstrap

minor

A brutal servant or school official at Roughborough.

Mrs. Richards

minor

A servant or housekeeper for the Pontifex family.

Figgins

minor

Also known as Mr. Figgins, young Figgins

A schoolfellow of Ernest's at Roughborough.

Mrs. Cross

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or neighbor.

Susan

minor

A servant in the Pontifex household.

Mr. Rollings

minor

Also known as old Rollings

A farmer or tradesman known to the Pontifexes.

Bell

minor

Also known as Rose

Servants or minor characters in the household.

Mr. Ottery

minor

A minor acquaintance of the Pontifexes.

Mrs. Gover

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or neighbor.

Alice

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or acquaintance.

Mrs. Jones

minor

Also known as Jones

A minor character, possibly a neighbor or servant.

Tom Paine

minor

Also known as Tom

A minor character, possibly a servant or acquaintance.

Jim

minor

Also known as James

A minor character, possibly a servant or acquaintance.

Dr. Jones

minor

A doctor or minor professional acquaintance.

Mr. Templer

minor

A minor acquaintance of the Pontifex family.

Mr. Larkins

minor

A minor character, possibly a tradesman or neighbor.

Mrs. Goodhew

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or neighbor.

Miss Wright

minor

Also known as old Miss Wright

An elderly acquaintance of the Pontifex family.

Miss Allaby

minor

Also known as a Miss Allaby

One of Christina's unmarried sisters.

Mrs. Burne

minor

A minor character, possibly a neighbor or servant.

Mrs. Holt

minor

Also known as poor Mrs. Holt

A minor character, possibly a neighbor or tradesman's wife.

Bill

minor

A servant or minor character in the story.

Topsy

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or child.