page_title: Wolf Solent
section_title: Main characters
hierarchical_section_title: Wolf Solent / Plot summary / Main characters
caption_attribution_description: English: River Yeo at Bradford Abbas. Looking downstream from one of the cutwaters of 763879. The bridge is C16 https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1119407 .
context_page_description: Wolf Solent is a novel by John Cowper Powys that was written in rural upper New York State and published by Simon and Schuster in May 1929 in New York City. The British edition, published by Jonathan Cape, appeared in July 1929. This, Powys's fourth novel, was his first literary success. It is a bildungsroman in which the eponymous protagonist, a thirty-four-year-old history teacher, returns to his birthplace, where he discovers the inadequacy of his dualistic philosophy. Wolf resembles John Cowper Powys in that an elemental philosophy is at the centre of his life and, because, like Powys, he hates science and modern inventions like cars and planes, and is attracted to slender, androgynous women. Wolf Solent is the first of Powys's four Wessex novels. Powys wrote both about the same region as Thomas Hardy and was a twentieth-century successor to the great nineteenth-century novelist.
  The novel is set in the fictional towns of Ramsgard, Dorset, based on Sherborne, Dorset, where Powys attended school from May 1883, and Blacksod, modelled on Yeovil, Somerset, as well as other places in Dorset like Dorchester and Weymouth that were also full of memories for Powys.
context_section_description: Wolf Solent: A thirty-four year old history teacher, who starts a new life in his birthplace, Ramsgard (Sherborne), Dorset. He resembles John Cowper Powys and has been described as "Powys's mouthpiece for most of the time". Wolf is a follower of Powys's  elemental philosophy: he hates  science and modern inventions, such as cars and planes, and like Powys is attracted to slender, androgynous women.
  Ann Solent: Wolf's mother. She and Wolf have lived in London since Wolf was ten. She eventually follows Wolf to Dorset. Krisdottir suggests that her character is based on that of Powys sister Marian, who followed him to New York, became an expert in lace and started her own business there.
  William Solent: Wolf's father, a former history teacher in Ramsgard, he died in the town's workhouse after some scandal. His wife left him and went to live in London when Wolf was ten.
  Mattie Smith: Wolf's half sister who marries Darnley Otter at the end of the novel and arranges to adopt Olwen.
  Squire John Urquart of Kings Barton who hires Wolf to help him write his Rabelasian "History of Dorset", a work that concentrates "on scandal and crime. Kings Barton is based on the village of Bradford Abbas between Yeovil and Sherborne.
  Gerda Torp: The eighteen-year-old daughter of  Blacksod gravedigger and tombstone maker, who is making Redfern's tombstone for Squire Urquart. Wolf is attracted by Gerda's beauty and her affinity with the natural world, symbolized by her ability to whistle like a blackbird. He seduces Gerda within a week of meeting her and then marries her. She is both "a kind of earth spirit" and "at the same time an ordinary country girl" It has been suggested that Gerda is based, in part, on Powys' wife Margaret Lyon.
  Christie Malakite: Younger daughter of Malakite. She has read widely and has much more in common with Wolf than Gerda. She also "belongs to the boy-girl type" that Powys himself was deeply attracted to.  Morine Krissdottir in Descents of Memory suggests that she is based upon Powys's lover Phyllis Playter, whom he met in March 1921, and eventually lived with for the rest of his life.
  Selena Gault: is an "eccentric ugly woman who is spiritual mother to Wolf", and who had probably been his father's lover.
  Jason Otter: A poet. Cambridge scholar Glen Cavaliero suggests that "Wolf's interior dialogue with the man on the Waterloo steps is paralleled by his actual dialogue with Jason", who "acts as a kind of malevolent chorus". The novel has "three haunting poems by [Jason]", and Belinda Humfrey suggests that perhaps these are among the best poems Powys wrote. Jason is apparently based on Powys's brother Theodore Powys the novelist and writer of short stories.
  Darnley Otter: His brother. At the end of the novel he marries Mattie Smith.
  Lord Carfax: A cousin and former lover of Wolf's mother. He found Wolf his job with Urquart, and at the end of the novel intervenes to help various people, including restoring Gerda's ability to whistle, which she lost during her marriage to Wolf.
  James Redfern: He was Urquart's secretary before Wolf and he drowned in Lenty Pond "in mysterious circumstances". It appears that Urquart was in love with this "beautiful young man". The local people refer to Wolf as Redfern Two, "and wait for him to drown in Lenty Pond".
  Roger Monk: Urquart's manservant.
  Bob Weevil: A shop assistant, Wolf's main rival for Gerda'a affections, who cuckolds him.
  Lobbie Torp: Gerda's young brother.
  Malakite: A pornographic bookseller in Blacksod. At the end of the novel, dying after falling down the stairs, he tells Wolf that Christie pushed him.
  Olwen: She is the child of an incestuous union between Malakite and his elder daughter.
  Stalbridge: A waiter who Wolf "has identified as the incarnation of that suffering face" on the steps of Waterloo Station. He is one of those Lord Carfax helps at the end of Wolf Solent.
  T. E. Valley: A clergyman and one of several homosexual characters in the novel.
caption: The River Yeo at Bradford Abbas. In a letter in 1925 Powys refers to the setting of Wolf Solent: "It won't really be Bradford Abbas nor will Yeovil be Yeovil or Sherborne Sherborne, but it will be my idea of those places". The River Yeo (Lunt in the novel) runs through all these places.[35]
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