Character guide

Grace Melbury

major

Also known as Grace, Miss Grace Melbury, Miss Melbury, Grace Fitzpiers

Grace is the doted-on only daughter of a prosperous timber-merchant who spent beyond his means to make her a lady, and she comes home carrying an education that no one in the village quite shares. Her father's old promise binds her toward the honest woodsman Giles Winterborne, while the newly arrived Dr. Fitzpiers offers the refinement her training has taught her to crave. Her divided loyalty between duty and desire sets the whole quiet tragedy of Hintock in motion.

Giles Winterborne

major

Also known as Winterborne, Mr. Winterborne, Mr. Giles Winterborne

Giles is the steady, well-liked woodsman whose family once held the land Melbury now owns, and whose livelihood depends on the very trees he tends. He loves Grace with a patience that never bargains or complains, even as her father's ambitions and his own shrinking fortunes push her toward another man. His quiet integrity becomes the moral measure against which the novel's more restless characters are judged.

Edgar Fitzpiers

major

Also known as Fitzpiers, Mr. Fitzpiers, Dr. Fitzpiers, Edgar

Fitzpiers arrives in Little Hintock with a London education, a small practice he barely bothers to build, and a habit of night study that gives way to idleness. He courts Grace with flattering attention, then finds his eye wandering toward the wealthy widow Felice Charmond, whose rank and mystery excite him more than domestic contentment can. His vanity and inconstancy turn a promising marriage into the engine of the novel's central sorrow.

Felice Charmond

major

Also known as Mrs. Charmond, Charmond, Felice

Mrs. Charmond owns the estate that swallowed the old Melbury manor, and she lives there alone, without companion or relative, wintering abroad in some years and staying put in others. Restless, self-indulgent, and weary of her own reputation, she finds in Fitzpiers a diversion that deepens past flirtation into something she cannot easily dismiss. Her wealth and carelessness give her the power to take what Grace has, and she wields it without much thought for the wreckage.

George Melbury

supporting

Also known as Mr. Melbury, Melbury, Mr. George Melbury

Melbury is a self-made man haunted by an old wrong done to a dead friend, which he tried to repay by promising Grace to Giles Winterborne. When Fitzpiers appears with better breeding and brighter prospects, Melbury urges his daughter toward the gentleman, only to watch the match sour. His anxious, well-meaning meddling drives much of the plot, and his late reckoning with his own mistakes gives the novel its bitterest irony.

Marty South

supporting

Also known as Marty, South, Marty South

Marty labors in the woods and at her father's bedside, where old John South's obsession with a swaying elm is slowly killing him and, by extension, threatening Giles's hold on his property. She loves Giles without hope and without complaint, watching him give his heart to Grace and offering help anyway. Her unglamorous fidelity stands as the novel's quiet counterweight to the vanity and calculation of its more prominent characters.

Mrs. Melbury

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Melbury, poor Melbury

She married the timber merchant chiefly to mother his motherless daughter Grace, and she has done that work so quietly that her own place in the family is nearly invisible. Her habit of anxious agreement — the shawl, the standing when she might sit — marks a woman braced for bad news she assumes is always coming. When Melbury's plans for Grace begin to curdle, her nervous watchfulness becomes one of the household's few registers of how badly things are going.

Timothy Tangs

supporting

Also known as Tim, Tim Tangs, young Timothy Tangs, old Timothy Tangs

He belongs to the chorus of Hintock labor — sawyers, turners, cider-men — who gather at Winterborne's hut and trade stories while their hands work and their heads wander. His world is small and his talk is large, and the rumors he helps circulate about Mrs. Charmond and the doctor shape how the village reads every scandal. He matters as one of the ordinary eyes through which Hardy measures the great house on the hill.

Grammer Oliver

supporting

Also known as Grammer, Old Grammer Oliver

She is old Hintock incarnate — full of dreams, portents, and a bargain with Fitzpiers that she recounts with grisly cheer. Her compact gives Grace a first, chilling image of the doctor as a remorseless anatomist, coloring the girl's whole approach to him. Superstitious, matter-of-fact, and unbothered by her own mortality, she turns the village's fear of the new medicine into something almost comic and entirely unsettling.

Suke Damson

supporting

Also known as Suke, poor Suke Damson

She is the affianced sweetheart of young Tim Tangs, and her easy familiarity with Fitzpiers makes her the first visible evidence of the doctor's careless appetites. Grace watches her slip down the garden path in a shawl, recognizes the sleeve at the door, and feels her own engagement turn to ash in a single glance. Suke's presence turns private jealousy into public knowledge, and her eventual marriage to Tim keeps the scandal alive in Hintock's memory.

Robert Creedle

supporting

Also known as Creedle, Robert, old Creedle

He works Winterborne's cider-house and rounds, dressed in silent relics of wars and voyages he never made, and he is the hut's chief chronicler of Mrs. Charmond's rumored ways. His loyalty to Giles is absolute, and his garrulous memory makes him the village's living archive of grudges, tempers, and old wrongs. When Winterborne's fortunes slide, Creedle's dogged service becomes one of the few constants in a household coming apart.

John South

supporting

Also known as South, old John South

He is the old woodman whose life is legally tied to Winterborne's property, so that his death will mean Giles loses the cottage and the living that go with it. His terror of the elm outside his window is not mere fancy — it is the fixed idea that has replaced his health, and no persuasion can move it. His slow decline forces Giles and Marty into a vigil that binds them closer and quietly sets the terms of Giles's coming ruin.

Mr. Percombe

minor

Also known as Percombe

Hairdresser from Sherton Abbas who attends to Mrs. Charmond.

Fred Beaucock

minor

Also known as Beaucock

Disreputable local man, sometimes acts as a go-between.

Darling

minor

Also known as old Darling

Giles Winterborne's horse.

Old Dr. Jones

minor

Also known as Dr. Jones, Jones, old Jones

Elderly doctor in the area, predecessor to Fitzpiers.

Mrs. Oliver

minor

Grammer Oliver's daughter-in-law, appears briefly.

John Upjohn

minor

Also known as Upjohn, John

Local carrier and minor character in Hintock.

Mrs. Dollery

minor

Woman who keeps a shop in Little Hintock.

Mr. Bawtree

minor

Also known as Bawtree, Farmer Bawtree

Local farmer and minor character.

Mr. Upjohn

minor

Another local carrier, possibly related to John Upjohn.

Lucy

minor

A young woman mentioned in passing.

Mrs. Cox

minor

Minor village character.

Blossom

minor

A cow owned by Giles Winterborne.

Mr. Charmond

minor

Also known as the late Mr. Charmond

Deceased husband of Felice Charmond, mentioned only.

Ambrose Winterborne

minor

Also known as Ambrose

Giles's deceased father, mentioned in backstory.