Character guide

Clara Wieland

major

Also known as Clara, Miss Wieland, Little Clara

Clara Wieland narrates her family's descent into terror from the quiet remove of her rural estate, where she manages her brother's household and nurses a discreet affection for Henry Pleyel. When Pleyel accuses her of an affair with the enigmatic Carwin, her faith in reason and in her own reputation begins to buckle under evidence she cannot explain. Her struggle to clear her name and protect her brother drives the novel's central investigation into what can be known and whom to trust.

Theodore Wieland

major

Also known as Wieland

Theodore Wieland is the patriarch of the family estate, a devoted husband to Catharine and a rational man whose religious enthusiasm has always run hotter than his sister's. When a disembodied voice commands him, he treats the summons as a heavenly messenger and his own will as a thing to be surrendered. His readiness to act on revelation rather than reason makes him both the moral center of the household and the most dangerous person in it.

Francis Carwin

major

Also known as Carwin

Carwin arrives at the Wieland estate as a cultured, well-read visitor and is soon welcomed as a kind of inmate, spending evenings in the temple and nights under the family roof. He explains away the mysterious voices as illusion or coincidence, yet his own knowledge and his evasions keep the family guessing at his true designs. His ambiguous presence turns every unexplained sound into a question of whether the supernatural is at work or a human agent is deceiving them.

Henry Pleyel

major

Also known as Pleyel, Catharine Pleyel

Pleyel is the family's closest intellectual companion, a man of Enlightenment principle who plans to return to Europe and the woman he loves. When he believes he has heard Clara confess to an affair with Carwin, he trusts the testimony of his senses over his long acquaintance with her character. His rush to judgment wounds Clara deeply and shows how even a rational mind can be undone by a voice it cannot trace.

Catharine Pleyel

supporting

Also known as Catharine, the breathless Catharine

Catharine is the sister of Henry Pleyel and the wife of Theodore Wieland, bound to both families by affection and marriage. She notices the strange silences and glances that pass between the men after their mysterious walks, and her innocent questions push Clara to confront what the others will not say. Her domestic steadiness contrasts with the growing unreason around her, making her presence a measure of what is being lost.

The elder Wieland

supporting

Also known as my father, My father

The elder Wieland built the family estate and raised his children in an atmosphere of austere devotion, keeping his own spiritual struggles largely to himself. His death, preceded by mysterious warnings and a solitary vigil, becomes the family's founding mystery and the first hint that unseen powers may be meddling in their lives. The dread he leaves behind shapes how Clara and Theodore read every subsequent voice and omen.

Grandfather Wieland

minor

Also known as my grandfather, My grandfather

Clara's grandfather, a religious enthusiast whose story is recounted.

Mr. Ludloe

minor

Also known as the honorable Mr. Ludloe

A philosophical acquaintance of Carwin, mentioned in his narrative.

Thomas Cambridge

supporting

Also known as Mr. Cambridge

Cambridge enters the Wieland circle as a man of medicine and sober judgment, called upon to explain away the voices, warnings, and apparitions that have shattered Clara's peace. His method is to reduce the inexplicable to human agency and coincidence, offering plausible motives where others see omens. His presence matters because he embodies the Enlightenment faith in explanation at the very moment the novel tests whether any explanation can hold.

Louisa Conway

supporting

Also known as Louisa, Miss Conway

Louisa lives among the Wielands as a dependent whose origins are deliberately veiled, her mother having arrived mysteriously and died leaving her in their care. Her presence is a living question mark, and when Major Stuart recognizes her, the revelation detonates a history of loss that reaches back to London and a vanished wife. She matters because her buried lineage shows how the novel's mysteries extend beyond the Wieland estate into a wider world of concealed identities and unresolved grief.

Maxwell

minor

Also known as Mrs. Maxwell

A family friend whose death is mentioned in the narrative.

Judith

minor

A servant in the Wieland household.

Mr. Hallet

minor

Also known as Hallet

An older man who tells stories about the elder Wieland.

Major Stuart

supporting

Also known as Stuart

Stuart arrives as an outsider whose military bearing and emotional intensity seem disproportionate to the quiet country setting, until his gaze falls on Louisa Conway and the pieces of his shattered past reassemble. His story of a wife who disappeared from her father's London house without explanation introduces a parallel mystery to the Wielands' own, one rooted in domestic rupture rather than supernatural visitation. He matters because his reunion with Louisa widens the novel's frame, showing that the forces unsettling Clara's world have human histories behind them.

Theresa de Stolberg

minor

Also known as Theresa

A woman in Carwin's backstory, connected to Ludloe.

Bertrand

minor

A servant of Carwin's, mentioned in his confession.

Mrs. Baynton

minor

A neighbor who assists Clara during her illness.

Mrs. Stuart

minor

Major Stuart's wife, mentioned in the later revelations.

Leonard Weise

minor

Also known as Weise

An ancestor of the Wieland family, mentioned in the genealogy.