Character guide

Jane Ward

major

Also known as Camille, Camille Jane, little Jane, Miss Jane Ward, Jane Austen

Jane Ward sits at her family's Chicago breakfast table, caught between her mother's careful social calculations and her own private longings. She knows exactly why her mother disapproves of Agnes Johnson, and she knows what it means to want something she isn't supposed to want. Her small rebellion — hurrying through breakfast to meet André near the Water Works Tower — sets the pattern for a life spent navigating the distance between duty and desire.

Stephen Jane

supporting

Also known as Steve, little Steve, Handsome young Stephen

Stephen Jane has grown into the kind of man to whom time brings distinction rather than decline, a contrast Jane feels keenly on her fiftieth birthday. He is present, fond, and largely unexamined — a brother whose overcoat and cheerful competence are simply assumed. His comfortable position in the family mirrors the double standard Jane measures herself against, making him a quiet reminder of what men are permitted to take for granted.

Isabel

supporting

Also known as Daisy Bell, Daisy, May, Belle, Aunt Isabel, little Belle

Isabel moves through the family as its most vehement moralist, certain that affairs are always the woman's fault and that parents must intervene. Yet her certainty cracks when Jane reminds her how it felt to be young and have love spoiled by well-meaning elders — and Isabel's hot denial reveals more than she intends. Her trembling lips and refusal to worry Robin expose a woman whose rigid judgments are built over her own unspoken disappointments, making her both foil and mirror to Jane.

André Duroy

major

Also known as André, Funny French André, Mr. André, Darling André, Dear André

André Duroy waits nonchalantly near the Water Works Tower for a fourteen-year-old girl who has arranged her whole morning around escaping her approved friends. He is the boy Jane cannot walk to school with if Flora and Muriel are fluttering at her elbow — the private, unapproved pleasure that her mother's social world cannot contain. Decades later, Jane still measures other men against what she learned from him, and his name surfaces in her mind as the standard for a kind of husband she understands all too well.

Cicily

supporting

Also known as Jack, Jacky, Now Cicily, A mutinous moody Cicily

Cicily is a young wife and mother of twins whose refusal to follow her engineer husband Jack to Boston becomes a family crisis, with Isabel pleading and Jane quietly disapproving. She likes Lakewood, she has made her plans, and she treats her husband's career as negotiable in a way the older generation finds both infuriating and familiar. Her stubborn preference for the life she wants over the life she is supposed to want makes her the younger echo of Jane's own central dilemma.

Stephen Carver

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Carver, Uncle Stephen, little Steve, Steve, Dear old Stephen

Stephen Carver is the kind, unalarming young man Jane chooses when her dreadful indecision finally ends, the suitor whose family she gamely declares she likes and whose gentle kiss she finds peaceful. He is everything the war-haunted moment seems to call for: safe, affectionate, and undemanding. His wistful question at the door — do you really love me? — and Jane's simple answer establish the quiet bargain at the center of her life, a marriage whose durable satisfactions she will later inventory with both pride and a whisper of something missing.

Jimmy Jane

supporting

Also known as Jimmy, Little Jane, Jane dully

Jane's younger brother, nicknamed Jimmy, whose casual silences and easy charm keep his sister guessing whether she matters to him at all.

Jimmy Trent

supporting

Also known as Mrs. James Trent, little Jimmy Trent, Little Jimmy Trent

An amusing, unreliable charmer who boards Jane's train on impulse, promising talk and trouble in equal measure.

Agnes Johnson

supporting

Also known as Aggie, Levelheaded Agnes, little Agnes

Jane's levelheaded friend from west of Lincoln Park, whose blunt loyalty keeps pressing Jane toward the life she actually wants.

Muriel Lester

supporting

Also known as Lester, Aunt Muriel

A dreamy, untidy society matron whose comfortable, gossipy household shows Jane a world both gayer and looser than her mother's.

Flora Furness

supporting

Also known as Miss Flora, Cousin Flora

Jane's fashionable cousin, lovely and listless, gliding through luxury trains and ballrooms with a sapphire on her hand and nothing much to do.

Mr. Ward

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Ward, Mr. and Mrs. Ward

Jane's cheerful, newspaper-buried father, the one parent who seems to like her exactly as she is and quietly believes in freedom.

Bert Lancaster

supporting

Also known as Mr. Bert Lancaster, Mr. Lancaster, Robin

Bert Lancaster belongs to the older Chicago set that Jane and Isabel dissect over tea, invoked as a benchmark for the kind of rich, society-page suitor who might court their widowed sister. His long final illness gave Muriel something to organize and quarrel over, and his death leaves her at fifty with money, freedom, and no occupation for her energies. He never appears in the present action, but his fortune and his absence shape how the family measures Muriel's next choices.

Jenny

supporting

Also known as Janie

Jenny is one of the three grown Carver children whose futures occupy Jane on her fiftieth birthday, the middle child who does not care for dances, does not want any particular young man, and announces plans to lead her own life. Where her brother Steve has embraced banking and Boston, Jenny resists the conventional Lakewood script for a daughter, and her restlessness is a low, persistent friction in Jane's otherwise ordered world. She matters because her discontent quietly echoes the choices Jane herself once faced.

Minnie Carver

supporting

Also known as Aunt Marie, Aunt Marie Carver, Marie, Dear old Minnie, Molly

Minnie has made herself so indispensable to old Mrs. Ward that the daughters cannot dislodge her, even as her sulking and her asthma dictate where the household can and cannot go. When Mr. Ward collapses with double pneumonia, Minnie hovers at the threshold, resentful of the nurses and radiating a martyr's grievance that her mistress feels obliged to manage. Her stubborn hold on the family is both comic and quietly sad, a small domestic power struggle running beneath the larger drama.

Mrs. Lester

minor

Also known as IV Mrs. Lester

Muriel's mother, a formidable society matron.

Mr. Carver

minor

Also known as Mr. Alden Carver, Alden Carver, Alden, old Mr. Carver

Stephen Carver's father, the elderly patriarch of the Carver family.

John Ward

supporting

Also known as Mrs. John Ward, John Ward, Little John Ward, Jacky

Mr. Ward presides over the breakfast table with the Tribune and an easy joke, the warm counterweight to his wife's careful proprieties, and he is the parent who most openly delights in Jane. His decision to stand bareheaded for twenty minutes at Mrs. Lester's graveside in February slush brings on the double pneumonia that opens the novel's central family ordeal. Steady, generous, and a little careless of himself, he is the emotional anchor whose illness forces the Ward women to reckon with loss.

Albert Lancaster

minor

Also known as Mrs. Albert Lancaster, young Albert, Mrs. Lancaster, Lancaster

Bert's father, a stern and traditional gentleman.

Mumsy

supporting

Mumsy presides behind the coffee tray in her crisp white dressing-sack, correcting Jane's table manners and steering her toward the right friends, Flora and Muriel, and away from the unacceptable Agnes Johnson. Her snobbery is gentle but absolute, rooted in a Chicago hierarchy of streets and fortunes, and it forms the atmosphere Jane grows up inside and later measures herself against. She is the quiet engine of the novel's early social world, defining what a Ward woman may and may not do.

Mamma

supporting

In the grey silk dinner dress she has not changed since the night before, her neck cords slack and her eyes ringed with brown, Mamma is the image of wifely endurance as Mr. Ward fights double pneumonia. She is caught between the doctor's brisk instructions, Minnie's wounded sulking, and her own exhaustion, and she cannot bring herself to dismiss the servant who rules her. Her frailty and her fierce attachment to her husband give the family crisis its emotional center and reveal what the Ward marriage has quietly been.

Mr. Furness

minor

Flora's father, a wealthy and indulgent businessman.

Aunt Silly

minor

Also known as Silly, Poor old Silly, poor Silly

An eccentric elderly aunt of Jane's, known for her foolish chatter.

Miss Parrot

minor

The family's gossipy and nosy neighbor.

Uncle Alden

minor

Also known as Alden

Jane's uncle, a kindly but somewhat ineffectual man.

Mother

supporting

She sits behind the coffee tray, her pretty, proud little head held high above the silver urn, her eyes wandering competently over the table — a woman who reads her household the way she reads a room. Her tranquil rebuke of Jane's table manners carries a sharper edge when the name Agnes Johnson comes up, since Agnes lives west of Lincoln Park and her mother works in an office, something unforgivable in her eyes. She approves wholeheartedly of Flora and Muriel, whose Rush Street and Huron addresses suit her ambitions. Her quiet calculus of who Jane should walk to school with shapes the world her daughter is learning to navigate.

Teddy Brown

minor

Also known as Ed Brown, Ed, Brown

A young man from a neighboring family.

Marion Park

minor

Also known as Marion

A friend of Jane's from her college years.

Barbara Belmont

minor

Also known as Belmont, Barbara

A glamorous and sophisticated friend of the family.

Father

minor

Jane's father, a figure of authority and affection.

Jack Bridges

minor

Also known as Jack

A young man who becomes a friend of the family.

Robin Bridges

minor

Also known as Bob, Robin

Jack Bridges' brother, a friend of the family.

Rosalie

minor

Also known as Pretty Rosalie

A beautiful but shallow young woman in Jane's social circle.

Papa

minor

Jane's grandfather, a dignified and old-fashioned gentleman.

Edith

minor

Also known as Edie

A friend of Jane's from her school days.

Dad

minor

Jane's affectionate term for her father.

Mr. Duroy

minor

Also known as Of Mr. Duroy

André's father, a French businessman.

Sarah Bernhardt

minor

Also known as Bernhardt, Sarah, Suddenly Sarah

The famous actress, seen as a cultural icon by the characters.

Freddy Waters

minor

Also known as Freddy

A young man who courts one of Jane's friends.

Robin Redbreast

minor

Also known as Robin

A childhood nickname for a boy who grows up with Jane.

Miss Thomas

minor

Also known as Miss Thomas⁠—Miss Thomas

A teacher at the school Jane attends.

Uncle Robin

minor

Also known as Robin, Bert, Uncle Bert

An older relative of the family, known for his storytelling.

Lily Furness

minor

Also known as Lily

Flora's younger sister, a quiet and observant girl.

Mrs. Duroy

minor

André's mother, a Frenchwoman of refined taste.

Dr. Bancroft

minor

The family physician, a trusted and wise doctor.

President M. Carey Thomas

minor

Also known as President Thomas

The president of Bryn Mawr College, an admired figure.

Eric Arthur

minor

Also known as Eric

A young man who appears in Jane's later social circle.

Theodore Roosevelt

minor

Also known as Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt

The U.S. president, mentioned as a contemporary figure.

Dr. Winter

minor

Also known as old Dr. Winter, Old Dr. Winter

An elderly doctor who attends the family.

Cyril Fortune

minor

Also known as Cyril

A young man who briefly courts one of Jane's friends.

Miss Milgrim

minor

Also known as ancient Miss Milgrim

An elderly spinster who lives in the neighborhood.

Lizzie

minor

A servant in the Ward household.

Mr. Bournique

minor

Also known as old Mr. Bournique

A French neighbor and friend of the family.

Dido

minor

A classical reference used as a nickname for a character.

Mrs. Furness

minor

Flora's mother, a society hostess.

Inigo Fellowes

minor

Also known as Inigo

A young artist who becomes part of Jane's circle.

Bill Belmont

minor

Also known as Billy

Barbara Belmont's brother, a charming young man.

Herbert Hoover

minor

Also known as Albert

The future U.S. president, mentioned in passing.

Aeneas

minor

Also known as Faithless Aeneas

A classical figure referenced in conversation.

Mademoiselle Cyprienne

minor

Also known as Cyprienne, Mademoiselle Cyprienne Pyramel-Gramont

A French acquaintance of the family.

Mugsy

minor

A childhood nickname for a family friend.

Cassandra Frothingham Perkins

minor

Also known as Casey, Cassandra

A friend from Jane's college days.

Eve

minor

Also known as An Eve

A biblical reference used as a metaphor in conversation.

Mr. Trent

minor

Also known as Tell Mr. Trent

Jimmy Trent's father, a respectable gentleman.

Miss Coulter

minor

A teacher at Jane's school.

Cora Delafield

minor

Also known as Cora

A fashionable friend of the family.

Solomon Lester

minor

Also known as old Solomon Lester, Old Solomon Lester

Muriel's father, a wealthy and eccentric old man.

Billy Winter

minor

Also known as Billy

Dr. Winter's son, a young man in the neighborhood.

Susan Frothingham

minor

Also known as Susan

Cassandra's mother, a family friend.

Buzzy Barker

minor

Also known as Buzzy

A childhood playmate of Jane's.

Dexter

minor

A young man mentioned in passing in social circles.

Grandma Carver

minor

Also known as Grandma

Stephen Carver's mother, the elderly matriarch.

Tony

minor

A servant in the Carver household.

Miss McKelvey

minor

A teacher at Jane's school.

Miss Miller

minor

A teacher at Jane's school.

Dollie Grey

minor

Also known as Dollie

A friend of Jane's from her youth.

Gertie

minor

A servant in the Ward household.