# The Way of the World — Character guide

> Key figures in The Way of the World by William Congreve.

- [Mirabell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/mirabell.md): Mirabell moves through Lady Wishfort's circle as a man of wit, credit, and careful schemes, managing other people's secrets while concealing his own. His courtship of Millamant is less romance than bargaining: he trades 
- [Mrs. Millamant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/millamant.md): Millamant is the prize of the play's marriage market, pursued by Mirabell, proposed to Sir Wilfull, and watched over by her aunt, yet she treats the whole business as an occasion for brilliant conditions. She refuses the
- [Lady Wishfort](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/lady_wishfort.md): Lady Wishfort presides over her household with wax lights, liveried footmen, and an appetite for admiration that makes her both comic and dangerous. She holds the purse strings to Millamant's inheritance and the power to
- [Fainall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/fainall.md): Fainall is married to Mrs. Fainall, Mirabell's former mistress, and carries on an affair with Mrs. Marwood while scheming to strip his wife of her fortune. He speaks of love as leverage — 'Have I no other hold to keep yo
- [Mrs. Fainall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/mrs_fainall.md): Mrs. Fainall married Fainall on Mirabell's advice to save her reputation, and she has regretted it ever since — 'While I only hated my husband, I could bear to see him; but since I have despised him, he's too offensive.'
- [Mrs. Marwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/marwood.md): Mrs. Marwood plays the trusted friend to Lady Wishfort while conducting an affair with Fainall and nursing a thwarted love for Mirabell. Her soliloquy over Foible's closet — 'Why this wench is the passe-partout, a very m
- [Witwoud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/witwoud.md): Witwoud moves through Mirabell's circle as a professional talker, forever defending Petulant while exposing him, and insisting that a wit should no more be sincere than a woman constant. His loyalty is real but performed
- [Petulant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/petulant.md): Petulant wants to be seen as a man of appetite and consequence, so he manufactures the evidence: coach-hire for women, a summons he refuses to answer, a cruelty he wears as a humour. His rudeness is not confidence but pe
- [Sir Wilfull Witwoud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/sir_wilfull.md): Sir Wilfull arrives in town as the family's blunt instrument, half-brother to Witwoud and a prospective husband nobody consulted. He is wary, literal, and disarmingly without guile, asking only for further acquaintance b
- [Foible](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/foible.md): Foible lives by her wits in the gap between what her lady wants to hear and what her lady's enemies need her to say. Caught between Mirabell and Lady Wishfort, she improvises a tale of his insults so vivid that it turns 
- [Waitwell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_of_the_world_se/characters/waitwell.md): Waitwell takes on the role of a lifetime — a wealthy, vengeful uncle courting Lady Wishfort — and plays it with a straight face while privately longing for a cordial and an end to the charade. His disgust at the part is 

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