Aunt Annie- Frederick's aunt. She raised him.

Caroline- Miranda's aunt. She introduced Miranda to G.P.

Cousin Mabel- Frederick's cousin. She is deformed and spastic.

Crutchley and Tom- Two men who worked in the annexe with Frederick. He doesn't like them because they made fun of him, and he considred them slimy.

Frederick/Ferdinand/Caliban- The bourgeois clerk who wins the lottery and kidnaps Miranda. His hobby is collecting butterflies, and he takes great pride in his collection. Frederick's father died in a driving accident when he was a child, and his mother left. He was raised by his Aunt Annie and Uncle Dick. Frederick has an obsession with ideals of purity, strongly illustrated by his hobby--collected butterflies are dead, and dead things are pure because they do not feel anything, and they do not change. For him, Miranda is the ultimate butterfly, but he is strongly disillusioned when he realizes that she is not pure and dead inside the way his butterflies are and the way he is. He tells Miranda his name is Ferdinand, which is the name of a respectable character in Shakespeare's The Tempest. But Miranda, in her diary, secretly calls him Caliban, which is the name of a savage, deformed slave in The Tempest. All Frederick wants is Miranda's love.

George Patson (G.P.)- Miranda's friend/love intrest in the outside world. He is an artist, and Miranda has Ferdinand purchase one of G.P.'s paintings for her. G.P. is a main subject Miranda discusses in her diary.

M & D- Miranda's parents

Marian- The girl who Frederick sees at the end of the novel and considers "collecting."

Miranda- The blonde, grey eyed art student whom Frederick kidnaps, or "collects." She narrates Section Two of the novel. She is sensitive, artistic, and although she claims to hate snobbery, a bit snobbish in her superior attitude towards her captor. Frederick sees her initially as the embodiment of purity, which is his ideal of perfection, but as her diary entries reveal, Miranda's attitudes towards sex are far from Frederick's idea of pure. These attitudes are revealed to Frederick in the most pivitol point of the book, discussed in further detail in our paper. All Miranda wants is her freedom.

Piers, Peter Catesby, Donald, David, Antoinette- Some of Miranda's friends in the outside world.

Uncle Dick- Frederick's uncle. He raised Frederick along with Aunt Annie, and was a benevolent presence in Frederick's childhood. He suffered from a stroke.