Persuasion Characters

Family Ties (and Chains): Anne and the ElliotsWe first meet Anne as part of the Elliot family, and not a very important part. While her elder sister Elizabeth has the power of being her father’s...

What Does Wentworth Have Against Persuasion, Anyway?In Captain Wentworth’s world, what you do is who you are. For example, we can look at how Wentworth viewed dear departed Dick Musgrove, who...

If Mr. Elliot were an animal, he would be a chameleon – he’s very good at changing his colors to suit whatever his current circumstances and desires happen to be. When, in his early day...

When we first meet Louisa, she’s Miss Normal – both she and her sister have "all the usual stock of accomplishments" and are "like thousands of other young ladies" (5.45). As we find ou...

In the Seven Deadly Sins Olympics, Sir Walter would take a gold medal in vanity. (Distant runner-up: Vanity Smurf.) He’s so vain, he probably thinks this novel’s about him.Vanity was th...

Mary is just as snobby as her sister Elizabeth and her father Sir Walter, but she has fewer opportunities to show her snobbery in public. While Sir Walter has people around him who quite understand...

Elizabeth is often paired with her father, and they do have a lot in common: both are self-centered snobs who wouldn’t know kindness if it hit them on the head. The social position that allow...

Lady Russell is the queen of advice. Love troubles? Money troubles? She’s on it. Her methods, however, are not always to her advisees’ liking. While Anne generously gives her the benefi...

Mrs. Clay has an eye for a good thing. Her association with the Elliots allows her to live in a much grander style than she herself can afford, and all it costs her is having to pretend the Elliots...

Captain Benwick, like Anne, has been struck with a bad case of lost love (symptoms: listlessness, fatigue, reading lots of sad poems). While Anne herself isn’t adverse to reciting a few mopey...

Mrs. Smith’s common name belies her uncommon character. Faced with a truly astounding run of bad luck (husband dead, money gone, health gone, friends walking out), she still manages to stay c...

Mrs. Croft is smart (Mr. Shepherd calls her a better businesswoman than her husband), confident, and doesn’t take sass from anyone, not least her brother. When Captain Wentworth tries to argu...

Admiral Croft is an example of a good man made better by a great wife (imagine what Homer Simpson would be like without Marge). Anne sees in their driving a symbol of their relationship: the Admira...

Charles is the book’s Average Joe (or at least Average-Minor-Landed-Gentry Joe). He’s not much into books or art, preferring to go out and shoot things, but he’s good-hearted and...

Henrietta lives mostly in the shadow of her more forceful older sister. Her waffling over whether to stick with Charles Hayter or abandon him to go after Wentworth gives her sister an excuse to sho...

Mrs. Musgrove is the main person we see in mom-mode in the book. She even sheds tears for her black sheep son, Dick, and happily makes her house look like a kindergarten over the Christmas holidays...

The patriarch of the Musgrove clan and current occupant of the mansion at Uppercross, Mr. Musgrove contrasts to Sir Walter as a father figure. When his daughters wish to marry, he moans a little ab...

Harville is one of Captain Wentworth’s closest friends, and the one who brings Wentworth (and eventually the whole Musgrove clan) to Lyme Regis. Harville slightly resembles Mrs. Smith –...

The Hayters are the Musgroves’ poor cousins, and Charles, the eldest Hayter son, is the one most likely to make something of himself. His profession is the church, meaning that, in order to g...

First up, what’s with the mouthful of titles? Let’s take them one by one: "dowager" means that her husband is dead; "viscountess" means that her husband was a viscount (higher up than t...