Character List
"I" -
The fictionalized author-surrogate ("call me Mary Beton,
Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not
a matter of any importance") whose process of reflection on the
topic "women and fiction" forms the substance of the essay.
The Beadle -
An Oxbridge security official who reminds the narrator
that only "Fellows and Scholars" are permitted on the grass; women
must remain on the gravel path.
Mary Seton - Student
at Fernham College and friend of the narrator.
Mary Beton - The
narrator's aunt, whose legacy of five hundred pounds a year secures
her niece's financial independence. (Mary Beton is also one of the
names Woolf assigns to her narrator, whose identity, she says, is
irrelevant.)
Judith Shakespeare -
The imagined sister of William Shakespeare, who suffers
greatly and eventually commits suicide because she can find no socially
acceptable outlets for her genius.
Mary Carmichael -
A fictitious novelist, contemporary with the narrator
of Woolf's essay. In her first novel, she has "broken the sentence,
broken the sequence" and forever changed the course of women's writing.
Mr. A - An
imagined male author, whose work is overshadowed by a looming self-consciousness
and petulant self-assertiveness.
