# The Way of All Flesh — Character guide

> Key figures in The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler.

- [Ernest Pontifex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/ernest_pontifex.md): 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 impul
- [Christina Pontifex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/christina_pontifex.md): 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 cont
- [Theobald Pontifex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/theobald_pontifex.md): 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 wh
- [George Pontifex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/george_pontifex.md): 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
- [Alethea Pontifex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/alethea_pontifex.md): 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 a
- [Ellen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/ellen.md): 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
- [Towneley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/towneley.md): 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 crue
- [Pryer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/pryer.md): 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 f
- [Mrs. Jupp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mrs_jupp.md): 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
- [Dr. Skinner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/dr_skinner.md): 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 ped
- [Mrs. Pontifex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mrs_pontifex_senior.md): George Pontifex's wife and Ernest's grandmother.
- [Charlotte Pontifex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/charlotte_pontifex.md): 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 undecei
- [Mr. Hawke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mr_hawke.md): A schoolmaster at Roughborough who torments Ernest.
- [Joseph](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/joseph.md): A servant or acquaintance of the Pontifex family.
- [Mrs. Allaby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mrs_allaby.md): Christina's mother, a matchmaker for her daughters.
- [Mr. Shaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mr_shaw.md): A lawyer or business associate of the Pontifex family.
- [Mrs. Cowey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mrs_cowey.md): A neighbor or acquaintance of the Pontifexes.
- [Miss Maitland](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/miss_maitland.md): A young woman admired by Ernest.
- [Samuel Butler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/samuel_butler.md): 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 h
- [Mrs. Skinner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mrs_skinner.md): Dr. Skinner's wife.
- [Badcock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/badcock.md): A schoolfellow or minor character at Roughborough.
- [Miss Snow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/miss_snow.md): A young woman associated with Ernest's London life.
- [Mrs. Thompson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mrs_thompson.md): A landlady or neighbor in London.
- [Holt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/holt.md): A tradesman or acquaintance of the Pontifexes.
- [Mr. Baxter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mr_baxter.md): Neighbors or acquaintances of the Pontifex family.
- [Mrs. Jay](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mrs_jay.md): A minor character, possibly a servant or neighbor.
- [Mr. Fairlie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mr_fairlie.md): A minor acquaintance of the Pontifexes.
- [Mr. Overton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mr_overton.md): 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 b
- [Mr. Hughes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/mr_hughes.md): A minor character, possibly a tradesman or neighbor.
- [Dr. Martin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/dr_martin.md): A doctor consulted by the Pontifex family.
- [Dawson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/dawson.md): A minor character, possibly a servant or tradesman.
- [Eliza Allaby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/eliza_allaby.md): One of Christina's sisters.
- [Maria](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_all_flesh_se/characters/maria.md): A servant in the Pontifex household.

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