The Collector characters

Appears from the start

A socially isolated clerk and amateur butterfly collector who has watched Miranda from a distance for years. After winning a large sum of money, he buys a secluded country house and prepares its cellar in the belief that holding her there will eventually make her understand and love him. He narrates his actions in a flat, self-justifying manner and prefers possession and control to any relationship he cannot arrange on his own terms.

Appears from the start

A young art student whom Frederick abducts and confines in the cellar of his country house. Intelligent, observant, and determined to retain her identity, she tries negotiation, deception, escape, and appeals to his conscience. She calls her captor Caliban and insists that his gifts and claims of devotion cannot turn imprisonment into love.

Appears from the start

Frederick's aunt, with whom he and her daughter have lived. The money Frederick wins allows Aunt Annie and Mabel to travel abroad, leaving him free to buy his isolated house without close family scrutiny.

Appears from the start

Aunt Annie's daughter and Frederick's cousin. Her departure overseas with her mother removes one of the few people accustomed to Frederick's habits from his immediate life.

Also known as G.P.

First appears in chapter 2

An older painter who has become Miranda's friend, critic, and intellectual influence. In her diary she repeatedly measures her artistic ambitions and earlier behavior against his demanding opinions, while also examining the mixture of admiration, resentment, and attraction she feels toward him.

First appears in chapter 2

Miranda's younger sister, recalled throughout the captive's diary as part of the family life from which she has been cut off. Miranda's memories of her are affectionate but also colored by ordinary sibling judgment and guilt.

First appears in chapter 2

Miranda's father, a doctor whose conventional outlook she often criticizes in her private reflections. Her captivity leads her to reconsider both her distance from her family and the assumptions behind her earlier judgments of them.