Caddie Woodlawn Characters & Character Analysis

Caddie Woodlawn Characters

Caddie Woodlawn

Caddie Woodlawn is the heroine of the novel and based on Carol Ryrie Brink's real grandmother. Caddie is eleven when the novel opens and is a tomboy who loves to run wild with her brothers. She originally has no interest in learning to be a lady, which her mother Harriet desperately desires for her. Caddie prefers to visit Indians, pick berries and plow fields with her brothers. Caddie is allowed this freedom because her father, John Woodlawn, decides early in Caddie's life that letting her run wild ensures her health, unlike his daughter, Mary, who is too frail to survive on the Wisconsin prairie.

Unlike her brothers, Caddie is a sensitive and empathetic character. She befriends Indian John and risks her life to warn him that the white settlers may attack. She spends an entire silver dollar on candy and supplies for three half-Indian children who are poor and abandoned...
(read more)