Arthur Kipps

Arthur Kipps is the protagonist of the novel. When his ghost story begins, he is a young man, working as a solicitor in London. At the end of the novel, Arthur is middle-aged, living with his wife, Esmé, at Monk’s Piece.

As a young man, Arthur is judgmental and stubborn. When he first meets the future godfather of his son, Samuel Daily, Arthur judges his appearance harshly. Arthur says, “Having, in my youthful and priggish way, summed up and all but dismissed him, I let my mind wander back to London…” (25). The narrator’s reflection lets us see that Arthur is embarrassed his former arrogance. He says, “I confess I had the Londoner’s sense of superiority in those days, the half-formed belief that countrymen, and particularly those that inhabited the remoter parts of our island, were more superstitious, more gullible, more slow-witted, unsophisticated, and primitive...