Some of the characters' names are significant, particularly the women's names, which often indicate the personalities of the characters. The names Nívea, Clara, Blanca, and Alba are more or less synonyms, and this is mentioned as a family tradition. (Nívea means snow-white, and can be translated as "white" as can all the others, though they have specific meanings.) Férula's name means "rod" in Latin; when used in Spanish it refers to an object used to immobilize a limb, such as a splint or cast.
Clara del Valle Trueba
Clara (one of its translations is the equivalent of English "clear", although it is also a common female name) is the key female figure in the novel. She is a clairvoyant and telekinetic who is rarely attentive to domestic tasks, but she holds her family together with her love for them and her uncanny predictions. She is the youngest daughter of Severo and Nívea del Valle, wife of Esteban Trueba, and mother of Blanca, Jaime, and Nicolás. Even as a child her strangeness is noticed and seen as a threat to many in her community. Otherwise, her family and devoted Nanny protect her from her strangeness. She and her uncle Marcos use her powers to run a fortune-telling centre as she develops other paranormal activities like dream reading. Her uncle eventually leaves in a primitive airplane he built himself, disappearing for many months, assumed dead but later is found to die instead as the result of a 'mysterious African plague' contracted during his travels. Clara practices divining and moving inanimate objects, most notably a three-legged table, and she is surrounded by friends such as the psychic Mora sisters and The Poet. Severo and Nívea del Valle are main characters in another Allende novel. As Clara grows up, she develops her abilities and is even able to communicate with ghosts and spirits. Clara represents love and cherishment. Clara's marriage to Esteban Trubea is something she accepts but she never truly loves him and knows from the beginning that she will never do so. She is uninterested in material things and takes for granted her own high economic standing. It is not until later, after great tragedy, that she takes the role of helper/servant instead of dreamy bystander.
Esteban Trueba
Esteban Trueba is the central male character of the novel and is one of the story's main narrators along with his granddaughter Alba. In his youth, he seeks the mermaid-like and green-haired Rosa the Beautiful, daughter of Severo and Nívea del Valle, toiling in the mines to earn a suitable fortune so that he can support her. However, she dies by accidental poisoning while he is working in the mines, a cruel stroke of fate that hardens his heart. He works hard to develop his estate at Tres Marias ("Three Marys," a nickname for Orion's Belt), and seduces and rapes many local peasant women, fathering many illegitimate children, including Esteban García (by Pancha García, sister of Pedro Segundo). Although he eventually marries Clara (Rosa's sister and youngest daughter of the Del Valles) and raises a large family, Esteban's stubborn and violent ways alienate all those around him. Esteban has a tense relationship with his daughter Blanca but shows genuine love and devotion to his granddaughter Alba. Despite his often violent behavior, he is also devoted to his wife Clara, entering into a state of permanent mourning following her death. As a self-made man who earned all of his wealth from years of work spent improving Tres Marías, Esteban scorns communists and believes them to be lazy and stupid. Later in life, he turns to politics where he spends his money and effort trying to prevent the rising Socialist movement within the country. However, after the military coup he loses much of his power and suddenly has to face the fact that he has become an old and weak man. Yet it is not the loss of power, so much as the injury done to his country, that agonizes the highly patriotic Esteban. His realization that he desires the love of his family and peace in his country leads to a pivotal change in his character. In his last days, he slowly loses the rage that has been driving him all his life. He begins to make amends to the remaining members of his family—first, by helping Blanca and Pedro Tercero escape the country so they can live happily, and then, after Alba is kidnapped by the military, by persuading his longtime friend Tránsito Soto (who has influence in the military) to help him rescue her. With the success of both of his efforts, Esteban dies happily, knowing that he has achieved Clara's posthumous forgiveness.
Blanca Trueba
Blanca (literally, "white") is Clara and Esteban's first-born daughter. She spends her childhood between the Truebas' house in the capital and Tres Marías, where she forms an intense connection with a boy named Pedro Tercero García, the son of Esteban's foreman. Their friendship endures, though they only see each other in the summer, and upon adolescence they become lovers. Their love persists even after Pedro is run out of the hacienda by Esteban, because he is putting communist ideas in the other workers' heads. After she becomes pregnant with Pedro Tercero's child, her father forces her to marry Count Jean de Satigny, whom she does not love. After Blanca leaves the Count and returns to the Trueba home, she sees Pedro sporadically, resisting his attempts to persuade her to marry, but their relationship continues. Blanca's reconciliation with her father eventually allows her to flee to Canada with Pedro, where they finally are able to achieve happiness together. Blanca is also able to earn large amounts of money for the first time by selling her clay figurines, which are seen as folk art by Canadians.
Pedro Tercero García
Pedro is the son of the tenant and foreman of Tres Marías, Pedro Segundo García. At a young age, he falls in love with Blanca and is the father of her only child, Alba. In his youth, he spreads socialist ideals to the workers on the hacienda, and later he becomes a revolutionary and a songwriter (his character may be modeled after revolutionary songwriter Victor Jara). After the coup d'état in his country, he and Blanca exile themselves to Canada with Esteban's help. It is mentioned that he resumes his political crusade during his exile in Canada where his music is embraced in translation even if "chickens and foxes are underdeveloped creatures" in comparison with the "eagles and wolves" of the North.
Alba Trueba de Satigny
Alba (Spanish for "Dawn," Latin for "white") is the daughter of Blanca and Pedro Tercero García, although for many years of her life she was led to believe that Count de Satigny was her father. From before her birth, her grandmother Clara decreed that she was blessed by the stars. Because of this, Clara said she didn't need to go to school; as a result, Alba was raised at home until she was seven. The novel ends with Esteban's death, and Alba sits alone in the vast Trueba mansion beside his body. The last paragraph reveals that she is pregnant, although she does not know (or care) whether the child is Miguel's or the product of the rapes that she endured at the hands of security police, during her imprisonment.
Severo and Nívea del Valle
Severo (literally, "severe") and Nívea ("snowy") are the parents of Rosa, Clara, and several other children. Severo's candidacy for the Liberal Party of Chile promptly came to an end after someone tried to poison him, but killed his daughter Rosa instead. Nívea, however, would come to become a prominent social activist for women's liberation. The couple pass away in a gruesome car accident in which Nívea is decapitated and her head lost. The details of the accident were hidden from their daughter Clara, because she was pregnant at the time. However, her intuition brings her to the location of the lost head, which ends up being hidden in the basement since the body had already been buried.
The Nanny
Having served the Del Valle and Trueba families all her life, Nana is emotionally close to all the children that she has taken care of, especially Clara. She even takes care of Clara's children after Severo's and Nívea's death. Nana passes away in an earthquake and is buried without fanfare. Her body is later moved to the mausoleum with Clara's and Rosa's bodies.
Rosa del Valle
The oldest daughter of Severo and Nívea, Rosa was born with green eyes and great beauty. Her unearthly beauty intimidates everyone in the village except for Esteban Trueba, who is deeply enamored of her and seeks her hand in marriage. Rosa waits patiently while Esteban slowly accumulates wealth by working in the mines so that he will feel worthy of Rosa. Esteban returns to find that Rosa has died from a dose of poison meant for her father. Though never truly forgetting Rosa, Esteban marries her sister Clara instead.
Jaime Trueba
Jaime is the son of Clara and Esteban Trueba. A shy, bookish, and compassionate doctor who treats the poor, he serves as a contrast to his outgoing twin brother Nicolas and his bad-tempered father. Jaime has always had a strained relationship with his father, especially given Jaime's revolutionary ideals. He becomes friends with the Candidate whilst under the impression that the revolution is to be peaceful. Jaime also becomes good friends with Alba, whom he treats as a sister. He is summoned to the Presidential Palace during the coup and is killed for refusing to announce that the president has drunkenly committed suicide. Esteban doesn't believe it until Jaime appears in spirit to Clara, showing her how he had been murdered by the regime.
Jaime may be inspired by the personal doctor Arturo Jiron of the Chilean president Salvador Allende.
