The impulsive, dramatic Waterhouse daughter who meets Maude among their families’ neighboring cemetery plots and becomes her close friend.

Maude’s upper-middle-class mother, who welcomes a more modern society and holds political views sharply opposed to Gertrude Waterhouse’s.

Lavinia’s lower-middle-class mother, who reveres Queen Victoria, preserves Victorian traditions, and disapproves of the girls’ friendship.

A young gravedigger who remains involved in Maude and Lavinia’s lives and plays an important part in both families’ troubles.

A Coleman family man whose brief first-person passages reveal his impressions of his wife, neighbors, other people, and events.

A Waterhouse family man whose concise narrative passages disclose his impressions of his wife, neighbors, other people, and events.

A peripheral character who nevertheless plays key roles in events affecting the Coleman and Waterhouse families.