Miss Lonelyhearts characters

Appears from the start

An unnamed New York newspaper employee who writes the paper's advice column under the female pen name Miss Lonelyhearts. The desperate letters sent to the column have stopped feeling like material for a joke, but he has no answer equal to their suffering. He moves between numbness, disgust, drink, and a troubled longing for religious certainty.

Appears from the start

Miss Lonelyhearts's editor, an articulate cynic who treats the advice column and its readers as occasions for cruel comedy. He repeatedly attacks Miss Lonelyhearts's religious impulses and turns earnest feeling into performance.

First appears in chapter 3

Miss Lonelyhearts's steady former fiancée. She values ordinary affection, work, and a life away from the newspaper's corrosive atmosphere, and she remains concerned for him despite his volatility.

First appears in chapter 6

Shrike's wife, whose unhappy marriage places her within the same circle of frustrated desire and emotional cruelty that surrounds Miss Lonelyhearts.

First appears in chapter 11

A physically disabled reader who contacts Miss Lonelyhearts after recognizing something of his own pain in the advice column. Awkward and intensely earnest, he wants his suffering to be acknowledged as more than an abstract problem.

Also known as Mrs. Doyle

First appears in chapter 12

Peter Doyle's wife, whom Miss Lonelyhearts meets when he visits the couple. Restless and sexually aggressive, she draws him into another encounter in which his wish to help becomes entangled with appetite, contempt, and shame.