Characters
Moses Wapshot
Moses Wapshot is the handsome and promising elder son of Leander and Sarah Wapshot, raised in the quasi-idyllic environment of St. Botolphs, a once-thriving Massachusetts river town. His seemingly idyllic life is upended when his aunt Honora discovers his affair with Rosalie Young, a minister’s daughter who mistakes sex for love due to her loneliness and high expectations. Following family tradition, where young Wapshot males are sent to sea, Moses is launched into a tumultuous modern America. In Washington, D.C., he loses his government job after an affair with a singer named Beatrice makes him a security risk. A chance encounter, however, secures him a well-paying position in New York, where he meets and eventually marries Melissa Scaddon, a distant relative.
Although Moses is a key figure in relation to plot development, as he leaves St. Botolphs in pursuit of fame, fortune, and identity, the modern world leaves him overwhelmed. He must reconcile his father's lessons of survival with the challenges he faces in his journey.
Coverly Wapshot
Coverly Wapshot, the less promising and less manly younger brother of Moses, also departs from their hometown of St. Botolphs. Unlike his brother, he does so secretly and voluntarily. Coverly's odyssey is marked by even more uncertainty. Ill-equipped for the outside world, he attempts to secure employment at a relative's factory in New York but is judged unemployable due to his emotional profile. He takes a job as a stock boy in a department store while attending night classes in computer taping. It is in a sandwich shop that he meets his future wife, Betsey MacCaffery.
After a nine-month stint on a Pacific island, Coverly settles in Remsen Park, a monotonously modern community linked to the rocket-launching center where he now works. His comically awkward love for Betsey, whom he affectionately calls his "sandwich-shop Venus," is fraught with difficulties, but they eventually reunite and have a son.
Coverly's journey is pivotal to the novel's plot, as he represents a younger Wapshot navigating the modern world. Despite feeling overwhelmed, he must draw upon the survival skills taught by his father, Leander.
Leander Wapshot
Leander Wapshot, the quintessential hero of The Wapshot Chronicle, is the family patriarch and unwavering advocate of tradition. His lineage of God-fearing Wapshot men drawn to the sea traces back to 1630. Though his attachment to the sea is genuine, it is reduced to ferrying passengers from St. Botolphs to Nangasakit aboard the aging Topaze, until a strategically timed storm allows his wife Sarah to convert the boat into New England's only floating gift shop.
Leander is boyishly enthusiastic and ceremonious, yet his self-esteem suffers constant blows from his cousin Honora, who controls the family purse strings and eventually sells the Topaze. His wife Sarah later turns it into a floating gift shop, further diminishing his sense of purpose. Deprived of his usefulness, Leander embarks on writing his autobiography, what he calls his confession. Just as his sons seem secure enough to return home and buy him a boat, Leander declares his intention to "return to the sea," quits his job at the silver factory, and soon drowns, perhaps intentionally. His final words, "Advice to my Sons," conclude the novel, allowing Leander a rare posthumous victory.
Honora
Honora is Leander’s cousin, a domineering and eccentric matriarch born in Polynesia to missionaries and raised by her Uncle Lorenzo. As heir to Lorenzo’s fortune, she effectively controls the future of all the Wapshots, including Leander's sons. Honora designates them as her heirs on the condition that they marry and produce male descendants. Though childless herself, having been...
(This entire section contains 1069 words.)
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briefly married to a Spaniard with the title of a marquis, she found the marriage disappointing in presumably sexual ways.
With a long-suffering yet faithful housekeeper named Maggie, Honora is described as "some naked human force," representing financial and emasculating power. She shares Leander's commitment to instilling traditional values in the new Wapshot generation but also serves as his rival for the family's legacy.
Sarah Wapshot
Sarah Wapshot, Leander’s wife, is another significant influence in his life. She is instrumental in transforming the Topaze into a floating gift shop, thus removing Leander’s last connection to the sea. Sarah is characterized as a relatively superficial figure but plays a crucial role in shaping Leander's fate, contributing to his demise through her control and manipulation.
Betsey MacCaffery Wapshot
Betsey MacCaffery Wapshot is Coverly’s wife, an orphan from Georgia whom he meets while she works in a New York sandwich shop. Her ordeal in the unfriendly town of Remsen, where her loneliness takes on both ludicrous and nightmarish dimensions, underscores her Herculean yet comical quest for companionship. Although she initially leaves Coverly, taking their savings, they eventually reconcile. Despite this reunion, there is a subtle indication that their happiness may be short-lived.
Melissa Scaddon Wapshot
Melissa Scaddon Wapshot, the beautiful ward of Cousin Justina, becomes Moses’ wife. She agrees to marry Moses with the condition that they reside with Justina. After their marriage, Melissa transforms from a sensuous fiancée into an asexual, emasculating wife. This change persists until a fire destroys Justina’s home, effectively releasing Melissa from the metaphorical spell that had ensnared her.
Rosalie Young
Rosalie Young is a minister’s daughter whose profound loneliness and heightened expectations lead her to conflate love with physical intimacy. She recuperates with the Wapshots following a car accident and has a transient affair with Moses, inadvertently impacting his life trajectory.
Clarissa
Clarissa is a young woman made pregnant by Leander's elderly employer, who persuades Leander to marry her. Although Leander quickly grows to love Clarissa, she tragically takes her own life shortly after their daughter’s birth. Clarissa’s story is documented in Leander’s autobiography, and her daughter, Helen Rutherford, mistakenly believes Leander to be her father and later plays a part in the wrecking of the Topaze.
Pancras
Pancras is Coverly’s superior at the rocket center. His homosexual advances shortly after Betsey’s departure leave Coverly feeling unsettled and sexually confused, exacerbating his sense of unworthiness and exile.
Justina Molesworth Scaddon
Justina Molesworth Scaddon, a seventy-five-year-old widow of a five-and-dime store magnate, resides in her Hudson River Valley castle, a hybrid of Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon and Edgar Allan Poe’s House of Usher. She is depicted as the novel’s most imperious and comically grotesque female character, embodying both sexlessness and a vengeful nature.
