Candace

The novel’s protagonist, Candace, has rendered loyal service to her local church choir and is understandably put out by her abrupt dismissal from it. In defiance of the other choir members’s decision, Candace plays her parlor organ loudly in order to distract her replacement Alma, an act with which readers are led to sympathize. Despite Candace’s mistreatment of the photo album that her fellow choir members composed for her and her heated response to the clergyman who comes to speak with her about her defiant acts, Candace is always portrayed as a sympathetic figure whose resistance is righteous and understandable. This positive impression of Candace is furthered when she shows her capacity to forgive those who have wronged her without relinquishing her moral convictions. She invites her replacement, Alma, to sing a hymn for her once she knows she is dying, but is glibly critical of her performance afterward.

Reverend Pollard

Pollard was more outraged than most by Candace’s spoiling of Alma’s performance and took it upon himself to try to dissuade her from doing so again. While he speaks with gentility and courtesy, it is clear that the author’s intention was to portray him and the choirmaster as the primary instruments of patriarchal authority, the leading figures in the church.

William Emmons

William is the local choirmaster, who for many years had kept up a close friendship with Candace and had even once been romantically interested in her. Given their history, Candace takes his betrayal more to heart, even than that of her nephew, and she refuses to let him see her when she is dying.

Wilson Ford

Wilson is Candace’s nephew, who is portrayed as having a genuine affection for Candace’s replacement, Alma. Despite this, he comes across as a deeply unsympathetic character, given his threatening of his aunt with violence unless she ceases her defiance of the community’s decision. Ultimately, he gets what he wants thanks to his aunt’s charity, as Candace forgives him for his rudeness when she is on her deathbed and agrees to give him the inheritance on which he depends in order to marry Alma.

Alma

Alma is Candace’s replacement, a capable singer who is loved by Wilson and indeed by most of the community because of her youth, voice, and beauty. The author, however, portrays her as something of a traitor against her elder as well as against her gender in her complicity with the men of the village in deposing Candace from the position she has occupied for so long.