# Miss Masson — Those Barren Leaves character guide

> Miss Masson in Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Poor Miss Masson, Dorothy Masson, Dorothy

**First appearance:** 0000-part-i-an-evening-at-mrs-aldwinkle-s

## Snapshot

Dorothy Masson loves with a soft, unrelenting solicitude that her reluctant admirer finds more suffocating than hatred could ever be.

## Who they are

One of the Aldwinkle circle's quieter fixtures, Miss Masson belongs to that rarer class of women whose devotion is patient, orchid-bearing, and impossible to escape cleanly. She laughs at her own small jokes, looks up for applause, and reproaches only with sad brown eyes — a tenderness the narrator experiences as a slow spiritual pumping he lacks the courage to end. Her unbroken, undramatic claim on him shadows the novel's early social comedy with the uncomfortable question of what one owes to being loved.

## In the story

### [VII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/chapters/vii)

Portrayed as abjectly devoted, with a look of terror and self-abasement when kissed.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/characters/miss_masson
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/characters