Nightwood

Doctor Matthew O’Connor, an Irish-American man from San Francisco, is introduced to the reader while he is delivering a rambling monologue at a party full of circus performers hosted at the home of a supposed count in Berlin. The setting may be unusual for a medical doctor, but O’Connor is not a typical doctor. He practices medicine without a license and is known for unorthodox methodologies and remedies. Most of the characters in the novel turn to him not for medical advice but for philosophical guidance on matters of life and love.

Prone to hyperbole, fantastical tales, and drunkenness, his speeches must be taken with a grain of salt, earning him the nickname Dr. Matthew-Mighty-grain-of-salt-Dante-O'Connor. While he exudes a gregarious persona in public, keeping up with gossip and holding court in bars, he leads a solitary private life. With no family in Paris, his “small slouching figure” can be seen visiting churches alone and frequenting a favorite cafe where the proprietor considers him “almost a son” (32).

The doctor struggles with his sense of self, particularly his sexual orientation and gender expression. The reader can infer this for the first time when, under the impression that no one is watching, he uses some of Robin Vote’s cosmetics during a house call. Only in conversations with Nora Flood, later on in the novel, does he admit to his innermost desires to move through the world as a woman. This desire accounts for his specialization in gynecology, an interest that has “driven him half around the world” (17). He considers himself to be a “permanent mistake” made by god, and his verbose nature is a coping mechanism used to keep these feelings of shame and self-consciousness at bay (141). Ultimately, he unravels from the tension between his inner sense of self and his biological reality, and the social pressures of the period.

Felix Volkbein is a Viennese man, born in 1880, who grows up believing he is born into nobility and assumes the title of baron just as his father did. He wears a monocle and has a blind eye that keeps him out of the army. Early on in life, Felix is well known but “not popular,” and no one is certain how he is fluent in seven languages or how he makes his money (although later on there is a reference to his job at a bank) (10). He resembles his father, who died before he was born, with hair starting too far back on his forehead, and a long "melancholy" face (11).

Within the first few pages of the novel, the reader is privy to details about Felix's father: he hid his true identity as an Italian Jew and passed himself as a baron in the House of Hapsburg. The fact of this inherited false identity is an essential key to understanding Felix’s sense of self and his ability to trick himself into ignoring certain aspects of Robin’s personality in order to maintain his fantasy of perpetuating the old noble traditions of Europe by producing an heir who will appreciate those traditions as much as he does.

Felix’s devotion to the old ways of Europe manifests in social affectations, such as bowing to anyone who seems to be someone of importance and always making a point to speak the given titles of anyone he meets. The reader can infer that Felix knows enough about his “diversity of bloods” (his mother was Christian and his father Jewish and not of nobility) to be embarrassed (11). His devotion to old European customs is his attempt to compensate (and perhaps overcompensate) for this embarrassment.

Nora Flood is an American entertainment publicist in her late twenties also known for running an eccentric salon out of her home in the US Northeast. She makes a brief appearance in the first chapter when her publicity work with a circus brings her to Berlin, where she meets both Felix and the doctor at a party. In an ironic twist, she tells the doctor “you argue about sorrow and confusion too easily” (23); by the second half of the novel, her self-assured personality has disintegrated, and she is the one going on about sorrow and confusion concerning her failed relationship with Robin Vote.

Nora is “broad and tall” with youthful skin (55). She is sincere and pure-hearted to a fault, lacking cynicism and a sense of humor, and she possesses the gentle temperament of an “early Christian” (56). She immediately falls into an infatuation with Robin Vote, and her protective and devoted nature is evident in their first encounter, when she pulls Robin away from a threatening circus lion. All of these qualities, which are essential to Nora, make it difficult for her to understand Robin’s impulse to lead a secretive and promiscuous life without her. Her default to give of herself to others, to the extent of “robbing” herself, leaves her “continually turning about to find herself diminished” (57).

Jenny Pentherbridge is a middle-aged serial widow. She does not work and survives on the income amassed from four dead husbands. She has a “beaked head" and a body that is at the same time “small, feeble, and ferocious” (71). She lives in a gloomy old house full of second-hand items, which sometimes she has purchased but more often than not has stolen. First introduced to the reader as one of Robin’s nameless lovers, her character develops in Chapter 4, “‘The Squatter,’” which is titled to reference her uncontrollable desire to figuratively squat in other people’s lives, as well as the derogatory nickname given to her by Nora.

Jenny’s overpowering personality trait is a lack of a personality of her own. Instead, she mimics the mannerisms and vocabulary of others, collects the facts of other people’s lives, and puts on airs by pretending to have read books that she hasn’t. Her “squatter” instincts go so far as driving her to inhabit the emotions of others, as indicated in her appropriation of Nora’s passion for Robin. In the end, she mimics Nora’s heartache when Robin leaves her as well.

Named after his paternal grandfather, Guido Volkbein is the son of Felix and Robin. He is a sensitive boy, small for his age and considered somewhat peculiar by his father. Implied in the text is Robin’s abandonment as a cause of his stunted emotional development and his poor health. Felix is protective of him and caters to his wants as a way of compensating for Robin’s absence. 

Felix Volkbeins’s father, Guido Volkbein is a Jew of Italian descent who early in his life faces religious discrimination. As a way of coping with the narrow scope of jobs available to him as a Jew, he passes as a member of nobility and assumes the title of baron. He does so by assigning elaborate stories to purchased antiques, which he presents as family heirlooms. He dies of fever six months before Felix’s birth.

Felix Volkbein’s mother, Hedvig Volkbein is a “Viennese woman of great strength and military beauty” (3). However, later in the book, she is described as being Florentine. She gives birth to her only child, Felix, late in life, at the age of 45, and dies shortly after. The text implies that she may have suspected (but chose to ignore) that her husband was obscuring his true identity.

Frau Mann, also known as The Duchess of Broadback, is a circus performer and longtime friend of Felix. She is perhaps the only character who is truly honest about crafting an alter ego for herself.

Count Onatorio Altamonte is an outlandish character who appears for only for a few moments when he breaks up a party at his house. He may or may not be a real count (though it is likely he is not), and no one can determine his country of origin. He is significant as yet another example of a character who is not who he says he is. He is responsible for hosting the party, which connects Felix and the doctor, thus setting the main action of the novel in motion.