Lives of Girls and Women: Characters
Lives of Girls and Women: Characters
Del Jordan
Del is the main character and the narrator of this novel. She goes through many different events throughout her life. Del was very close to her Uncle Benny until he married Madeleine, whom he found in the classifieds of the newspaper. Del was constantly followed by her little brother Owen and really despised his presence because he would end up telling his parents about the adventures they went on, and they would normally be ones that neither of them should have. Del also enjoyed catching frogs and being in the library: “I was happy in the library. Walls of printed pages, evidence of so many created worlds—This was comfort to me” (Munro 99). At the end of the novel, we find out that Del will be going to University.
Uncle Benny
Uncle Benny is Del’s Uncle. She states in the novel that “He had a very heavy black moustache, fierce eyes, a delicate predatory face. He was not so old as his clothes, his moustache, his habits, would lead you to believe; he was the sort of man who becomes steadfast eccentric almost before his is out of his teens. In all of his statements, predictions, judgments there was a concentrated passion” (Munro 2). Uncle Benny found an ad in the paper and found his future wife. He married Miss Madeleine Howey.
Miss Madeleine (Howey) Poole
Madeleine is the young woman that Uncle Benny married. “Her short hair was not combed, she was wearing a ragged print dress on her flat young body. Her violence seemed calculated, theatrical; you wanted to stay to watch it, as if it were a show, and yet there was no doubt, either, when she raised the stove lifter over her head, that she would crack it down my skull if she felt it – that is, if she felt the scene demanded it” (Munro 15). She also abused her daughter Diane. At the end of Madeleine’s appearance, she was described as “Madeleine! That madwoman!” (Munro 23).
Diane
The daughter of Miss Madeleine Howey. She is abused by her mother and in the novel just after Miss Madeleine Howey left Uncle Benny, he stated just what her mother had done to her. One of the stories was that “She held Diane’s legs to the bars of the crib with leather straps” (Munro 19).
Mother
“The Flats Road was the last place my mother wanted to live. As soon as her feet touched the town sidewalk and she raised her head” (Munro 6). But then later “she was to find she did not belong in Jubilee either […]” (Munro 6). “My mother was not popular on the Flats Road. She spoke to the people here in a voice not so friendly as she used in town with severe courtesy and a somehow noticeable use of good grammar” (Munro 7).
Father
“My father was different. Everybody liked him. He liked the Flats Road, though he himself hardly drank, did not behave loosely with women, or use bad language, though he believed in work and worked hard all the time. […] He had been raised here (like my mother, but she had cast all that behind her) on a farm deep in the country; but he did not feel at home there either, among the hard-set traditions, poverty, and monotony of farm life. The Flats Road would do for him; Uncle Benny would do for his friend” (Munro 7).
Owen
Owen is Del’s little brother, whom she never wants to take anywhere with her because most of the places Del goes she should not be. This makes Owen think he has the right to tell his mother and father his adventure stories, getting Del into trouble. “I did not take Owen cause he would tell” (Munro, 14). Owen did not like to be bothered when he was playing his games, “He didn’t answer; when he was playing his games he never wanted anyone around” (Munro 88).
Auntie Grace and Aunt Elspeth
Auntie Grace and Aunt Elspeth are the protagonist Del’s aunts. Both “Aunt Elspeth and Auntie Grace told stories. It did not seem as if they were telling them to me, to entertain me, but as if they would have told them anyway, for their own pleasure, even if they had been alone.” (Munro 28). In the novel, “Aunt Elspeth wearing a wonderful starched and ironed apron, with frills of white lawn […]” (Munro, 43).
Uncle Craig
Passed away due to a heart attack in the second short story, “The Heirs of The Living Body”. This short story is based on his funeral. He is said to always be at his typewriter “Typing undauntedly, behind his closed windows and pulled-down blinds.” (Munro, 43).