A Clergyman's Daughter - Characters

Characters

• Dorothy Hare – a spinster in her late twenties (28 at first), she lacks the ability to direct her own life and ends up as a trapped victim in every situation. She is successively dependent upon her father for a home, upon a fellow transient (Nobby) for means of survival and direction, upon fellow pickers for food in the hop fields, upon her father's cousin to find her employment, upon Mrs Creevy whose school appears to offer the only job available to her, and finally upon Mr Warburton to bring her home.
• Rev. Charles Hare – Dorothy's father, he is a self-centred clergyman whose spirituality and charity exist only in formal terms. He believes that tradesmen and the working class are beneath him, and refuses to pay them. He has some money, albeit dwindling, in stocks, and accumulates gargantuan debts.
• Mr Warburton – an easy-going and friendly bachelor in his late forties. He has three illegitimate children (whom he refers to as "the bastards") by his Spanish mistress, Dolores. He is seen as highly immoral.
• Mrs Evelina Semprill – Knype Hill's malicious gossip monger, she gets her comeuppance when she is sued for libel.
• Nobby – a vagrant who lives by begging, casual work and petty crime. He is eventually arrested for theft while working in the hop fields.
• Sir Thomas Hare, a "good-hearted, chuckle-headed" baronet—a caricature Wodehousian aristocrat.
• Mrs Creevy – the mean proprietress of a small school—she is tight-fisted and enjoys minor victories at the expense of others.