A Severed Wasp - Major Characters

Major Characters

• Katherine Forrester (Vigneras) — Pianist. In L'Engle's first published novel, The Small Rain (the first half of which was republished as Prelude), Katherine Forrester is a gifted but socially isolated adolescent studying to be a concert pianist at a strict boarding school. Katherine reappears in A Severed Wasp as an old woman (now Katherine Vigneras, from her marriage to her piano teacher and mentor Justin) looking back on her life and career while facing new dangers. Katherine Vigneras also appears very briefly in A Ring of Endless Light playing a recital that Vicky Austin and Zachary Gray attend.

• Mimi Oppenheimer (called Mimi Opp) — Surgeon. The character first appeared in A Winter's Love as the best friend of Virginia Bowen, whose mother contemplates having an affair as Virginia and Mimi spend their break from boarding school with Virginia's parents in the Haute-Savoie. In A Severed Wasp, Mimi is Katherine Forrester's neighbor and confidante. Mimi is a surgeon who, despite being Jewish and a bit of an agnostic, is friends with several people at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, especially retired bishop Felix Bodeway and Suzy Davidson. Mimi's grandmother was one of the Renier family; she is thus related to Simon Renier of Dragons in the Waters, Queron Renier of A House Like a Lotus and Stella Renier of The Other Side of the Sun.

• Felix Bodeway — Bishop. Like Katherine, Felix first appears in The Small Rain, encountering Katherine in New York City when Katherine has finished school and has Sarah Courtmont for a roommate. Felix is Sarah's boyfriend of sorts, a Bohemian would-be violinist with aspirations to be a "window cleaner" — that is, to help people see beyond themselves. Considered by Katherine to be a "lightweight" at the time of The Small Rain, she finds him much changed fifty years later, a retired bishop who has suffered, and is gentle, compassionate and afraid. He eventually confesses to having experimented with homosexuality and dissolute behavior as a young man, and it is implied there is an unrequited sexual component to his love for the present bishop, Allie Undercroft.

• Alwood "Allie" Undercroft — Bishop. The bishop of St. John the Divine at the time of the novel, Bishop Undercroft is an old friend of Felix Bodeway, husband of the vindictive Yolanda Xabo Undercroft, a retired singer, and the ex-husband of Sister Isobel, a nun and educator. From their first meeting, Katherine is struck by Undercroft's strong resemblance to Lukas von Hilpert, the onetime Kommandant of the prison camp where Katherine's husband Justin had his hands broken during World War II. During the course of the novel we learn that Lukas unknowingly fathered one of Katherine's children, and that Undercroft is Lukas' son.

• Suzy Austin Davidson — Cardiologist. A major character in the Austin family series of novels, Suzy "wanted to be a doctor ever since she could talk." A young child in her first appearance, she gives up eating pork after reading Charlotte's Web, and is the best friend of Maggy Hamilton when Maggy lives with the Austin family for a time. In later books she shows some jealousy toward her sister, Vicky Austin. As an adult, Suzy is a cardiologist, married to Josiah "Dave" Davidson. They have four children, Josiah (Jos), John, Emily, and Tory.

• Josiah "Dave" Davidson — Dean. A somewhat troubled teenager inThe Young Unicorns, his first appearance, Dave is a carpenter's son, a former member of the Alphabats gang, a former choirboy at St. John the Divine Cathedral, and the friend and sometime protector of the Austin children. At the end of the novel, his father having died, Dave moves in with the Dean of the Cathedral, Juan de Henares and rejoins the Cathedral choir. As an adult in A Severed Wasp Dave is the Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, married to the former Suzy Austin, and a friend of Mimi Oppenheimer.

• In addition, Philippa "Flip" Hunter is mentioned repeatedly in A Severed Wasp as a successful and respected artist, who painted a portrait decades earlier of Katherine Vigneras with her young son. In the early L'Engle novel And Both Were Young, Flip is a young artist who is initially miserable when sent to a boarding school in Switzerland. The character's story closely parallels that of Katherine Forrester in The Small Rain, and loosely parallels L'Engle's own experiences in boarding school.