Characters and speaker

The most important characters in the poem “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron are the speaker and the unnamed woman whom he describes.

The speaker

The speaker in the poem is also the narrator, Lord Byron himself. We know that the poem was supposedly inspired by Lord Byron’s cousin, Anne Hathaway, so we can easily assume that the speaker is Byron and not somebody else.

The entire poem depicts the speaker’s awe upon seeing the unnamed woman who “walks in beauty” (l. 1). He is amazed by the fact that she gathers features belonging to both the dark and the light realms. He is conquered by her beauty, which he associates with tenderness, grace and innocence.

Notice that nowhere in the poem is mentioned the fact that the speaker is in love with the woman. He admires her beauty, but he does not love her. Keep this in mind because, many times, readers mistakenly consider “She Walks in Beauty” to be a love poem.

The unnamed woman

The first instance in which the woman is depicted is q...