Dennis Green

Dennis is the least distinguished of Isabel's friends. He seems quieter than the rest, and he is apparently a writer.

Bill Hunt

Bill Hunt, another of Isabel's friends, is apparently a painter, although he refuses to paint the friends around the dinner table because the "light's wrong."

Isabel

Isabel is one of the main characters in "Marriage á la Mode." She is the object of her husband William's desire, as well as the cause of his frustration. At the time the story begins, Isabel has already firmly ensconced herself in a shallow lifestyle. She has chosen to trade in their former, quaint way of life for one in which she surrounds herself with thoroughly modern friends and attitudes. Her fixation on contemporary values presents itself through her parenting ideas—she gets rid of the children's old toys because they were "so 'dreadfully sentimental"'— as...