Characters
- Margaret Lea: a bookstore owner's daughter, whom Vida Winter asks to write her biography. The primary narrator of the book.
- Vida Winter: a famous novelist who has eluded reporters as to her true past, and is now ready to reveal her secrets to Margaret.
- Isabelle Angelfield: the younger of George Angelfield's two children and the mother of twins Emmeline and Adeline.
- Charlie Angelfield: Isabelle's older brother, who harbours an obsessive incestuous and sadistic passion for his sister.
- Emmeline March: the calm, complacent twin. Generally presumed by most to be mentally retarded.
- Adeline March: the angry, violent twin. Formerly known as Adeline March (a secret used as one of the "three verifiable truths" that Miss Winter reveals to Margaret at the beginning of the story).
- Aurelius Love: a resident of the Angelfield village, raised by Mrs. Love, he befriends Margaret.
- John Digence/"John-the-dig": Angelfield's longtime gardener and the Missus' companion.
- The Missus: Angelfield's aged housekeeper who essentially raises the twins along with John-the-dig.
- Hester Barrow: governess to Adeline and Emmeline.
- Dr. Maudsley: the town doctor who, along with Hester, attempts to help the twins through experimentation.
- George Angelfield: Charlie and Isabelle's father, who ignores the former and dotes on the latter after his wife's death.
- Mathilde Angelfield: Charlie and Isabelle's mother, who dies giving birth to Isabelle.
- Judith: Vida Winter's housekeeper.
- Dr. Clifton: Vida Winter's doctor.
- Mrs. Love: a woman who lived in the vicinity of Angelfield and raised Aurelius from the time he was left on her porch as an infant.
- Ambrose Proctor: a boy who worked at the Angelfield estate when the twins were about 16, has a more important role in the story that we learn later.
Read more about this topic: The Thirteenth Tale
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has “never had a chance, poor devil,” you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)