Our Town - Characters - CCEA

The central guiding presence in Our Town is the Stage Manager. He introduces the play, speaks directly to the audience, directs scenes and shifts time, and sometimes steps into minor roles. His authority and calm voice help the audience move between past, present and future, while bare staging keeps attention on ordinary moments. Through him, Wilder “breaks the fourth wall” to show that the smallest events in daily life carry deep value.

Emily Webb and George Gibbs are at the heart of the story. Emily is bright and honest, yet insecure; we follow her from her teens to her death, and briefly back to her 12th birthday, where she realises how easily people miss everyday joy. George begins as a popular, laddish schoolboy and grows into a kind, responsible farmer; he decides to forgo college to stay with Emily. Their wedding anchors the play’s middle act and show youthful hopes turning into adult commitments.

Around them, the town’s community is a picture of everyday life, change and mortality. Dr Frank Gibbs and Julia Gibbs balance duty and care at home and in the town; Charles Webb and Myrtle Webb offer guidance, worries and common sense. Daily figures like Howie Newsome and the Crowell boys mark the steady rhythm of time, while Professor Willard’s earnest “report” adds factual colour. Mrs Louella Soames gives the town’s gossiping voice and Simon Stimson provides a darker counterpoint: his struggle with alcoholism and, later, his bleak view from beyond the grave remind us that not all lives fit easily within small‑town expectations.

Overview of the main characters in Our Town

The three main characters in Our Town are The Stage Manager, Emily Webb and George Gibbs.

An omniscient narratorwho ‘manages’ the entire presentation, introducing the play, communicating directly with the audience, directing the other characters, manipulating time and even taking on minor roles within the action in the world of Grover’s Corners. He has a hat, a pipe and a watch which he consults in order to usher things along or proclaim when the interval should occur; he is usually portrayed as an older man, to indicate an element of wisdom. His abilities to move between the worlds of the play and the audience, communicate with characters who are both alive and dead, and skip back and forth in time show awareness of future events (characters’ deaths, for example). All demonstrate his role as a kind of metatheatrical device. He is also a character. This enables Wilder to ‘break the fourth wall’, guide the audience through the narrative journey of the play, and mediate its message more effectively.

One of the protagonistsof the play, whose journey we follow from her mid-teens to just after her death in childbirth, with a brief detour for the morning of her 12th birthday. She visits to observe herself and her ‘ordinary’ life then. Emily is clever at school and confident about her abilities there, although she shows some teenage insecurities, asking her mother for reassurance about whether she’s “pretty”. Emily is responsible enough to be elected Secretary and Treasurer for the senior class and is an honest, earnest person, telling George what the others think of his “stuck-up” attitude but feeling emotional about possibly causing him hurt by telling him. Her panic before her wedding to George shows her fears about growing up, but she feels both friendship and love for George. The marriage seems to have been a fairly happy one, although they are seen only as newlyweds and their lives together aren’t shown on stage. Her realisation in Act Three that the small moments of life are precious and unappreciated by those that live them forms the cornerstone of the play’s central message.

Like Emily, George is first seen as a teenager attending high school, where he is a star of the school baseball team. He too has second thoughts just before their wedding, wanting to remain unattached and free of responsibility instead of growing up. He is shown to be energetic and laddish at times, but is also well-meaning and kind. He can be impulsive, such as when he decides to forego agricultural college to stay with Emily. As a 16-year-old, he avoids some of his chores and doesn’t fully understand his homework. However, he shows an earnest willingness to be better, responding positively to Emily’s revelation that he is considered to have become “stuck-up” and appreciating her honesty. He progresses into a fairly successful farmer and responsible family man, with the last scene of the play showing how devastated he is by the loss of Emily.

There are a number of secondary characters in Our Town:

• Dr Frank Gibbs
• Julia Hersey Gibbs (Mrs Gibbs)
• Charles Webb (Mr Webb)
• Myrtle Webb (Mrs Webb)
• Simon Stimson
• Mrs Louella Soames
• Rebecca Gibbs
• Howie Newsome
• Joe Crowell
• Si Crowell
• Professor Willard
• Sam Craig

The hard-working local doctor and father of George and Rebecca. Dr Gibbs is caring and even-tempered, showing interest in and concern for others without being overbearing. He claims that the relationship between a father and son is the “darndest, awkwardest” thing, but seems calm and fair in his dealings with George, such as when he encourages him to do his chores and then offers to raise his allowance in Act One (Life). He is first seen on the way home from delivering twins in Act One and last seen laying flowers on the grave of his wife in Act Three (Death), signifying the full circle of living. Overall, he is usually a patient and forgiving husband and father, though he refuses to entertain his wife’s dream of travelling to France. He prefers to occupy himself with smaller, more local affairs – the everyday things on which the play centres itself.

Mrs Gibbs is a hardworking housewife who shows the same caring attitude towards her home and family that Dr Gibbs shows towards the community. She resists Mrs Soames’ gossip about Simon Stimson after choir practice, but does relay the information to her husband when she gets home, showing some concern for Simon’s situation as well as being mildly scandalised by it. She dreams of visiting Paris but never gets to go on such a trip; she is among the dead at the end of the play, having passed away between Acts Two and Three, and speaks calmly to Emily to help her adjust to losing her earthly life.

Editor of the local paper, the Grovers’ Corners Sentinel, and father of Emily and Wally. Mr Webb provides the “political and social report” called for by the Stage Manager in Act One, giving an overview of the town’s demographics and habits. Emily tells George in Act Two that she thinks of her father as “perfect”. The few interactions we see Mr Webb have with Emily generally show kindness alongside some bemusement at her teenage ways. George seeks advice from him on the morning of the wedding and Mr Webb says he has been happy by doing the opposite of the selfish and ignorant behaviour his father advised him to use in his marriage.

Like Mrs Gibbs, Mrs Webb is a housewife and mother of two, and sings in the church choir – she is described as “thin, serious, crisp”. She claims she would rather her children were “healthy than bright” and shows a little impatience with Emily when she asks about whether she’s pretty, suggesting a no-nonsense attitude and few aspirations for Wally or Emily beyond them living respectably. She isn’t always tactful in her speech. Furthermore, she acknowledges on the morning of the wedding that she hasn’t “prepared” Emily or informed her about marriage in advance, suggesting mother and daughter aren’t close confidantes; however, she does cry that morning to think Emily won’t be living in the family home any longer, showing her care for her daughter.

The director of the church choir, Stimson is also an alcoholic about whom there is much gossip and speculation in the town. He is said to have “troubles” which aren’t specified within the play, though the fact he is among the dead in Act Three because of his suicide suggests his difficulties are significant or had worsened for him. Dr Gibbs says he “ain’t made for small-town life”; this may be a comment on his lifestyle being more suited to a place where people know less about each other’s private lives, or may indicate that Stimson’s drinking comes from a place of boredom, frustration or feeling trapped. In Act Three, the deceased Stimson argues that life is “ignorance and blindness” and that those who live are “always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another”, indicating his negative view of life has not changed since being released from it.

Mrs Soames sings with Mrs Gibbs and Mrs Webb in the choir; she tries to gossip salaciously about Simon Stimson with them but is closed down by the other two women. She seems largely concerned with the superficial in life, commenting on the loveliness of Emily and George’s wedding even after she is among the deceased in Act Three.

George’s younger sister, who he mostly finds exasperating when they are younger, although they still converse at times. Rebecca is shown to be highly focused on money and appearance; she marries an insurance man and leaves the town to move to Ohio, showing her desire for a ‘bigger’ world than Grover’s Corners.

Joe is first seen delivering newspapers and chatting to the doctor aged only 11. This makes it all the more disconcerting when the audience is then informed by the stage manager that this little boy grew up to show great promise as an engineer but died in World War One. His brother Si has replaced him at the start of Act Two, three years later, showing how some small changes occur in the town.

The milkman, who appears in all three acts; his milk delivery is shown to be a mainstay of the town, one of the small everyday acts that occurs no matter what else happens in people’s lives.

Described as a “rural savant”, suggesting he comes from a humble countryside background but is unusually intellectually gifted, Professor Willard uses overly grand language and offers somewhat comically irrelevant facts about the town’s rocks, fossils and genealogical heritage. The stage manager gently urges him to hurry along and presses him back to the point.

Appears at the start of Act Three, described by the Stage Manager as a “Grover’s Corners boy, that left town to go out West” but not recognised by Joe Stoddard until he identifies himself, perhaps showing how seldom people leave and/or return to the town.

There are also a handful of minor characters in Our Town:

• Audience members
  • Woman in Balcony
  • Belligerent Man at Back of Auditorium
  • Lady in a Box
• Joe Stoddard
• Wally Webb

Noted as ‘Woman in Balcony’, ‘Belligerent Man at Back of Auditorium’ and ‘Lady in a Box’, these are actors ‘planted’ in the audience to ask questions of Mr Webb (in his capacity as newspaper editor) in Act One.

Joe Stoddard is the undertaker. He only appears in Act Three to prepare Emily’s grave and represents the normal, everyday presence of death in Grover’s Corners.

Emily’s younger brother. He doesn’t appear much in the play and we learn later that he died of a burst appendix on a camping trip while still a child.