Character guide

Ursula Brangwen

major

Also known as Ursula, Sisters Ursula, Ursula of Gerald, Continental Ursula

Ursula is the elder Brangwen sister, a teacher who enters the novel's social world — weddings, garden parties, classrooms — with an earnest desire to feel something real. She is drawn to Rupert Birkin's strange talk of love and submission, yet resists the way he wants her to sink herself into him. Her struggle to keep a self while giving herself away shapes the novel's central argument about what intimacy can honestly be.

Gudrun Brangwen

major

Also known as Gudrun, Brangwen, Poor Gudrun, Miss Brangwen, Miss Art - Teacher Brangwen

Gudrun is the younger Brangwen sister, a sculptor and teacher whose eye for beauty is inseparable from her contempt for the ordinary. At the Crich garden party she bristles at Hermione's class superiority and at the easy chumminess of young men, even as she recognizes she would do the same herself. Her attraction to Gerald Crich carries a destructive charge that gives the novel its coldest, most modern current.

Rupert Birkin

major

Also known as Birkin, Mr. Birkin, Rupert, Mrs. Birkin

Birkin moves through the novel as its restless theorist, flattering older women, provoking Gerald with talk of an additional perfect relationship between man and man, and pressing Ursula to accept something non-emotional and final in him. He contradicts himself, hates feelings, and yet genuinely wants to be acknowledged rather than merely used. His arguments with Ursula and Gerald set the terms for everything the book is trying to work out.

Gerald Crich

major

Also known as Gerald, Gerald Crich, Mr. Gerald, Master Gerald, The Gerald

Gerald is the son of Thomas Crich, a man of white flannels and easy command who moves through the Criches' social world with an air of doomed willingness. He feels Birkin's offer of alliance as strangely elating, yet cannot accept it — there is a numbness upon him, an absence of volition, and he is more glad to reject commitment than to make it. His entanglement with Gudrun becomes the novel's study of a man who has accepted the established order without livingly believing in it.

Hermione Roddice

supporting

Also known as Hermione, Roddice, Poor Hermione

Hermione arrives at the Crich garden party in trailing embroidered silk, striking and almost macabre, so strongly entrenched in class superiority that she can collect people out of curiosity. She talks with Ursula about Birkin's demands with a slow, sardonic patience, and behind her mild singsong lies a shuddering desire to prostrate herself before a man who would worship her in return. She is like a man, believing only in men's things, and her betrayal of the woman in herself shadows Ursula's own choices.

Loerke

supporting

Also known as F. Loerke, Herr Loerke

Loerke enters the novel's later social world as a sculptor whose work and talk appeal to Gudrun's own artistic severity, offering a kind of companionship that is all mind and no warmth. He is the counterweight to Gerald's doomed industrial masculinity, a figure who can admire and analyze without ever pledging himself. His presence sharpens the question of what Gudrun actually wants — and what her art costs her.

Thomas Crich

supporting

Also known as Thomas, Love Thomas Crich, Mr. Crich, Poor Mr. Crich

Thomas Crich is the patriarch of Shortlands, a colliery owner whose charitable impulse toward his miners has made him beloved and, in his son's eyes, weak. His long illness hangs over the family, and his insistence on loving his workers rather than mastering them has left Gerald with an industrial machine and no belief in the order it upholds. His slow dying is the quiet pressure beneath the Crich household, shaping Gerald's numbness and the novel's questions about what a man passes on.

Winifred Crich

supporting

Also known as Win, Winnie, Winifred, Fred, Miss Winifred

Winifred is the last child at Shortlands, half-sister to Gerald and Gerald's charge after their father's decline. She is willful, watchful, and quietly artistic, and her need for a drawing teacher draws Gudrun Brangwen into the Crich world. Through Winifred, the novel measures the distance between the children who still play and the adults who are already, in Birkin's phrase, doomed.

Halliday

minor

A bohemian acquaintance of Birkin and Gerald in London.

Pussum

minor

Also known as Hallo Pussum, The Pussum, the Pussum, A Pussum

A young woman in Halliday's circle, involved with Gerald briefly.

Mrs. Crich

minor

Also known as Lady Crich

Gerald's mother, a quiet and ailing woman.

Will Brangwen

minor

Also known as William Brangwen, Mr. Brangwen, Billy

Ursula and Gudrun's father, a craftsman and teacher.

Diana Crich

minor

Also known as Diana, Di, Miss Diana

A younger Crich sister who drowns at the water party.

Laura Crich

minor

Also known as Laura

Another of Gerald's sisters.

Palmer

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or acquaintance.

Maxim

minor

A guest at the Continental hotel.

Alexander Roddice

minor

Also known as Alexander, Alexander tall

Hermione's brother, a guest at Breadalby.

Julius

minor

A guest at Breadalby, part of Hermione's social circle.

Marshall

minor

Also known as Mrs. Marshall

A servant or employee of the Crich family.

Fräulein März

minor

Also known as Fräulein

A German woman encountered by the characters abroad.

Miss Bradley

minor

A teacher at the school where Ursula works.

Leitner

minor

A minor character, possibly an artist or acquaintance.

Sir Joshua Mattheson

minor

Also known as Joshua, Joshua Mattheson, Sir Joshua

A guest at Breadalby, a friend of Hermione.

The Contessa

minor

Also known as Contessa

A titled woman met during the Continental trip.

Libidnikov

minor

A Russian artist or acquaintance in the Continental scenes.