Jerome Palissier

Jerome Palissier (zhay-ROHM pah-lees-SYAY), the narrator, a scholar. A sensitive and romantic but passive child (and then young man), he is obsessed with his love for his first cousin Alissa. This love issues from a fascination with virtue and self-abnegation, and from a desire to protect Alissa from life. He is, however, continually frustrated by Alissa’s delaying tactics and refusals and by his own inability to overcome his passivity and act. Like Alissa, he fears the physical side of love. After Alissa’s death, he remains faithful to her memory.

Alissa Bucolin

Alissa Bucolin (ah-LEE-sah bew-koh-LA[N]), Jerome’s first cousin, a serious, gentle, and artistic young woman who, repulsed by her mother’s sexuality and infidelity, seeks to repress her own love for Jerome by insisting on the necessity of pure spiritual love and self-sacrifice. Her goal becomes nothing less than sainthood, an unmediated relationship with God. To that end, she abandons all nonspiritual concerns (music and literature), devotes herself to an ascetic existence (simple food and dress), and refuses to accept Jerome’s timid advances. After her death, her diary reveals the despair that came from her inability to transcend her earthly love for Jerome.

Juliette Bucolin

Juliette Bucolin, Alissa’s younger sister, an attractive and vivacious girl. Although less religiously oriented than Alissa, she shows an equally strong capacity for self-sacrifice when, despite her love for Jerome, she agrees to marry Édouard Teissières. She does, however, succeed in finding a form of happiness in motherhood and domesticity.

Lucile Bucolin

Lucile Bucolin, the adopted daughter of Pastor Vautier, Alissa’s mother. She is a strikingly beautiful woman of Creole origin, Her languid, sensual nature makes her feel stifled by the strict Protestant society in which she lives. Toward the start of the novel, she runs off with a lover. Her blatant infidelity to her husband shocks Alissa and Jerome and reinforces their fear of sexuality.

Abel Vautier

Abel Vautier (ah-BEHL voh-TYAY), the son of Pastor Vautier and friend of Jerome, who falls in love with Juliette. He later writes a novel that Alissa finds shocking.

Félicie Plantier

Félicie Plantier (fay-lee-SEE plahn-TYAY), the cousins’ aunt, a good-hearted but slightly scatterbrained woman who tries, with disastrous results, to bring Alissa and Jerome together.

Monsieur Bucolin

Monsieur Bucolin, Alissa’s father and Jerome’s maternal uncle. A passive and gentle man, he is crushed by his wife’s departure and seeks support and consolation from Alissa, who lives with him until his death.

Madame Palissier

Madame Palissier, Jerome’s mother, a widow who wears only black. She is a strong-willed and conservative woman who regards Lucile Bucolin’s nontraditional behavior as both shocking and immoral. She dies while Jerome is still a student.

Robert Bucolin

Robert Bucolin, the younger brother of Alissa and Juliette, a relatively uninteresting boy whom Jerome temporarily takes under his wing in Paris out of a sense of duty.

Pastor Vautier

Pastor Vautier, the father of Abel Vautier and (through adoption) of Lucile Bucolin. The sermon he pronounces after Lucile’s desertion of her family contains the biblical verse (Luke 13:24, “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way . . .”) from which the novel’s title is taken and that so strongly influences Alissa’s and Jerome’s conduct.

Miss Flora Ashburton

Miss Flora Ashburton, Jerome’s mother’s former tutor, now her companion.

Édouard Teissières

Édouard Teissières (ay-DWAHR teh-SYEHR), a winegrower from Nîmes who marries Juliette.

Evidently inspired by Gide’s recollections of his courtship with his future wife Madeleine Rondeaux (like Alissa, a slightly older first cousin), Strait...