Character guide

George Willard

major

Also known as George, Will, young Willard, young George Willard, Willy

George Willard moves through Winesburg as its newspaperman and its connective tissue, the one figure many of the town's isolated souls trust enough to speak to. Wing Biddlebaum's hands grow calm in his presence; others seek him out for the same reason. His youth and openness make him a vessel for stories he does not yet know how to hold, and his slow accumulation of these confidences shapes the book's quiet coming-of-age arc.

Jesse Bentley

supporting

Also known as Jesse, The Bentley

Jesse Bentley takes over the Bentley farm as a slight, minister-like young man and drives everyone around him into fearful obedience, including a delicate wife who does not survive the labor he permits. He is half strong—able to master others but never himself—and his religious ambition for legacy curdles into something isolating. His thwarted longing for a son and heir sets the emotional weather for the Bentley sections of the book.

Louise Bentley

supporting

Also known as Louise

Louise grows up on the Bentley farm under a father whose fanaticism leaves no room for tenderness, and she inherits his intensity without his purpose. Her marriage to John Hardy and her life as a farmer's wife become another arena for the loneliness she learned at home. Her unhappiness radiates outward, shaping the next generation of Winesburg's isolated lives.

Seth Richmond

supporting

Also known as young Seth, Seth

Seth Richmond puzzles his anxious mother, Virginia, by refusing to weep or tremble under scolding, meeting her instead with a steady gaze she cannot read. He runs away with two boys to a fair and sticks it out for his own good even after he wants to turn back. His friendship with George Willard and his tangled feelings for Helen White place him among the town's restless young, caught between Winesburg and the wider world.

Tom Foster

supporting

Also known as Drink Tom Foster, Tom

Tom Foster does odd jobs around town, sleeps in a cast-off fur coat, and finds absurd happiness in the smell of roasting coffee at Hern's Grocery. His grandmother dotes on him and scrubs the lawyer's office where he rents a room for a dollar a month. He has the power to be part of and yet apart from the life around him—a quality that makes his eventual turn to drink feel both surprising and inevitable.

Alice Hindman

supporting

Also known as Alice

Alice Hindman gives herself to Ned Currie before he leaves for Cleveland, and she holds to the idea of him long after he has stopped writing. As she reaches twenty-five and then twenty-seven, she joins the Methodist church and the Epworth League less from faith than from fear of her own isolation. Her loyalty becomes a trap, and her growing restlessness pushes her toward a crisis that exposes how thoroughly Winesburg's quiet has failed her.

David Hardy

supporting

Also known as David, Young David Hardy, young David

David Hardy is the grandson of Jesse Bentley, raised in the shadow of his grandfather's religious fervor and the family's tangled history. Like his mother Louise before him, he carries a restless impulse that cannot be contained by the narrow circumstances of farm life. His break from Winesburg marks one of the book's most decisive departures, showing how the town's pressures can either crush a spirit or propel it into the wider world.

Elmer Cowley

supporting

Also known as Cowley, Elmer

Elmer Cowley lives in Winesburg as an outsider among outsiders, desperate to shed the strangeness he feels clinging to him. His father's odd habits and the family's reputation only deepen his isolation, and his attempts to connect with George Willard keep collapsing into frustration. He embodies the town's deepest fear, that one might be seen as queer and never recover from it.

Joe Welling

supporting

Also known as Joe

Joe Welling moves through Winesburg's stores and offices with excessive politeness, a man his neighbors watch with amusement tempered by alarm. When an idea takes hold, his personality becomes gigantic and overrides everyone within sound of his voice, whether the subject is a flooded creek or a racehorse. His overwhelming enthusiasms make him both ridiculous and strangely admirable, a reminder that passion in Winesburg cannot stay contained.

Enoch Robinson

supporting

Also known as Enoch, young Robinson, young Enoch, old Enoch

Enoch Robinson left Winesburg for art school and fifteen years in a long narrow room facing Washington Square, where talking artists gathered and he sat silent in a corner. He never grew up, and the child in him kept bumping against money, sex, and other people's opinions until he retreated into a room of imaginary companions. His story is the book's most haunting portrait of loneliness, showing how the need to be understood can curdle into a world no one else can enter.

Wash Williams

supporting

Also known as Williams, old Wash, Wash

Wash Williams sits in his dirty telegraph office by day and drinks unbelievable quantities of beer by night, hating women with the same abandon he once loved his young wife. He keeps his hands clean and shapely, still proud of being the best operator in the state, and he pities men for letting their lives be managed by some bitch or another. His bitterness is so complete it commands a strange respect, and the story he eventually tells George Willard explains everything.

Helen White

supporting

Also known as Helen

Helen White returns to Winesburg from Cleveland for the Fair, well dressed and restless, aware that her months in the city have remade her. She wants George Willard to feel that change and to walk with her again as they did one summer evening beside a field of young corn. Their mutual longing, half-formed and awkward, gives the book its most tender thread, two young people trying to become themselves in a town that watches everything.

Elizabeth Willard

supporting

Also known as Mother Elizabeth Willard, Elizabeth

George Willard's mother, who married into the New Willard House and now moves through its halls like a woman who left her real life somewhere behind her.

Ray Pearson

supporting

Also known as Ray

A farmhand who once dreamed of going west to sea or to saddle, and now runs through the cornfields trying to stop a younger man from repeating his life.

Kate Swift

supporting

The schoolteacher whose evening lamp and bare shoulders draw the minister's gaze, and whose fierce, unspent passion seeks an outlet in George Willard.

Tom Willard

supporting

Also known as Tom Willy, windy old Tom Willard, Tom

Proprietor of the New Willard House, a man whose loud claims for the hotel and for his son George never quite cover the gap between boast and fact.

Wing Biddlebaum

supporting

Also known as Biddlebaum

A berry picker whose restless, expressive hands—famous for picking a hundred and forty quarts a day—betray a terror he has spent twenty years trying to hide.

Doctor Parcival

supporting

Also known as The Philosopher Doctor Parcival

A fat, unclean doctor with few patients and mysterious money, who corners the young reporter George Willard with tales that begin nowhere and end nowhere.

Hal Winters

supporting

Also known as Hal

Hal Winters works the fields around Winesburg but dreams of going West to sea or to ride shouting into strange towns. His careless bravado collides with Ray Pearson's panic over the same woman, Nell, and the children neither man planned. In the dusk by the fence, Hal's sudden, stubborn decision to marry and settle reveals the surprising seriousness beneath his wildness, and quietly shames the older man's fear.

Doctor Reefy

supporting

Also known as Reefy, old Doctor Reefy

Doctor Reefy practices medicine from a musty office above the Paris Dry Goods store, wearing one frayed suit for a decade and pelting his only friend with the hard paper balls of his thoughts. He builds little pyramids of truth and knocks them down again, a habit of mind that leaves him lonely and oddly wise. When a tall dark girl comes to him in trouble, their curious courtship offers the town one of its few glimpses of sweetness gathered into a gnarled place.

Adolph Myers

minor

Wing Biddlebaum's former identity as a teacher in Pennsylvania.

Belle Carpenter

minor

Also known as An Awakening Belle Carpenter, Belle

Young woman who works in a store and dates Ed Handby.

Ed Handby

minor

Also known as Handby, Ed, Edward

Bartender who competes with George Willard for Belle Carpenter.

Ned Currie

minor

Also known as Ned

Young man who leaves Winesburg and Alice Hindman behind.

Virginia Richmond

minor

Seth Richmond's mother, a widow who runs a farm.

John Hardy

minor

Also known as Mrs. John Hardy, Hardy

Banker who marries Louise Bentley, father of David.

Albert Hardy

minor

Also known as Hardy

Son of John Hardy, brother of David.

Windpeter Winters

minor

Also known as old Windpeter, Windpeter, old Windpeter Winters

Hal Winters' father, a violent drunkard killed in a train accident.

Will Henderson

minor

Editor of the Winesburg Eagle, George Willard's boss.

Hop Higgins

minor

Town night watchman who patrols the streets.

Wesley Moyer

minor

Also known as Moyer, Wesley

Young man who works at the livery stable.

Aunt Elizabeth Swift

minor

Also known as Elizabeth

Kate Swift's aunt, who raised her.

Art Wilson

minor

Also known as Art

Young man who works at the livery stable.

Louise Trunnion

minor

Also known as Louise

Young woman who has a brief sexual encounter with George Willard.

Enoch Bentley

minor

Also known as Enoch

Jesse Bentley's brother, who leaves the farm for the city.

Ebenezer Cowley

minor

Also known as Cowley

Elmer Cowley's father, a storekeeper in Winesburg.

Louise Hardy

minor

Also known as Louise

Daughter of John Hardy, sister of David Hardy.

Tom Hard

minor

Also known as Tom

Father of Tandy Hard, a man with a violent temper.

Tom King

minor

Husband of Sarah King, a farmer who dies young.

Henry Carpenter

minor

Belle Carpenter's father, a stern and religious man.

Henry Brattenburg

minor

Also known as Hal, young Hal

Young man who works at the livery stable.

Tom Little

minor

Also known as Tom

Man who runs a livery stable in Winesburg.

Mook

minor

Half-witted farmhand on the Bentley farm.

Sarah King

minor

Also known as Sarah

Widow who becomes the object of Reverend Hartman's desire.

Katherine Bentley

minor

Also known as Katherine

Jesse Bentley's wife, mother of Louise.

Edward King

minor

Also known as Old Edward King, old Edward King

Father of Tom King, an old farmer.

Tandy Hard

minor

Also known as Tandy

Young girl renamed Tandy by a stranger in town.

Harriet

minor

Sister of Seth Richmond, mentioned in passing.

Nell Gunther

minor

Also known as Nell

Young woman who works at the hotel dining room.

Mary Hardy

minor

Also known as Mary

Daughter of John Hardy, sister of David.

Mrs. White

minor

Helen White's mother, a socialite in Winesburg.

Tony Tip

minor

Young boy who works at the livery stable.

Ed Griffith

minor

Also known as Edward, Griffith

Young man who works at the drug store.

Turk Smollet

minor

Also known as Turk

Young man who works at the livery stable.

Gertrude Wilmot

minor

Woman who runs a boarding house in Winesburg.

Banker White

minor

Helen White's father, a wealthy banker.

Old Tom Bentley

minor

Also known as old Tom

Father of Jesse and Enoch Bentley, a farmer.

Young John

minor

Also known as John

Young man who works at the livery stable.

McKinley

minor

Also known as This McKinley

Man who runs a saloon in Winesburg.

Ed Thomas

minor

Also known as Edward the father, Tom

Father of Tom Foster, a carpenter.

John Spaniard

minor

Man who runs a restaurant in Winesburg.

Biff Carter

minor

Man who runs a lunch room in Winesburg.

Clarence Richmond

minor

Virginia Richmond's deceased husband, Seth's father.

Sugars McNutts

minor

Man who runs a saloon in Winesburg.

Thad Grayback

minor

Man who runs a livery stable in Winesburg.

Mabel

minor

Young woman who works at the hotel dining room.