Character Clues
Character Analysis
Speech and Dialogue
Our characters are super helpful about telling us what we can expect from them. For example, pretty much everyone talks about what a dirt bag Frank Carver is. One of the many examples comes in an exchange between Gascoigne and Clinch about our (least) favorite villain:
'Who is Francis Carver?' said Gascoigne.
Clinch hawked and spat on the floor. 'Piece of filth,' he said. 'Piece of murderous filth. Jo Pritchard—he's just a reprobate. Carver—he's the devil himself; he's the one.' (I.8.40-41)
Well, er, that seems clear enough. Since Gascoigne seems to be one of the few people in Hokitika who doesn't have serious backstory with Carver, Clinch very helpfully gives him—and us—the down low.
Actions
An exchange between Frank Carver and Emery Staines—and their reactions to each other—tell us a lot about how different those two dudes are. Frank is trying to get Staines to help him out with his dirty work, and Emery (in characteristic fashion) treats it all as good fun…without realizing he's getting involved in a crime:
"What would you say to a gold sovereign?"
"I don't believe I've ever addressed one before," said Staines.
Carver stared at him. (V.2.27-29)
Staines's inclination to make a joke rather than get excited about the prospect of a gold sovereign sums him up pretty well—as does Carver's sourpuss reaction. Staines is good-natured in the extreme and not greedy, and Carver is, well, the total opposite.
Clothing
Catton actually gives us quite a lot of detail about how the characters like to dress—especially Harald Nilssen, who apparently was quite the clotheshorse:
Harald Nilssen was famous in Hokitika for the high style of his dress. That afternoon he was wearing a knee-length frock coat with silk-faced lapels of a charcoal hue, a dark red vest, a gray bow tie, and cashmere striped morning trousers. His silk hat, which was hanging on a hatstand behind his desk, was of the same charcoal hue as his coat; beneath it was propped a silver-tipped stick with a curved handle. To complete the costume (for so he perceived of his daily dress: as a costume that could be completed, to effect) he smoked a pipe, a fat calabash with a bitten-down stem—though his affection for the instrument had less to do with the pleasures of the habit than for the opportunity for emphasis it provided. He often held it in his teeth unlit, and spoke out of the corner of his mouth like a comic player delivering an aside—a comparison which suited him, for if Nilssen was vain of the impressions he created, it was because he knew that he created them very well. (I.4.7)
The painstaking effort Harald puts into his look and the fineness of his duds tells us volumes about how carefully he thinks about and plans the way he appears to the world around him.
Thoughts and Opinions
As Catton writes with respect to Harald Nilssen's ongoing guilt over stealing (but then returning) a button from his cousin when they were kids, "a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done" (I.4.207).
So, in other words, you can get a sense of a character's, well, character from what they think (as opposed to what they say out loud). For example, when Emery finds the suggestion that Anna is a lunatic delightful (as opposed to offensive/frightening), you get a clear sense of how completely good natured—and impractical—he is.
Devlin describes his frustration in talking to Staines about this topic, providing characterization for Staines via his own thoughts here:
I fear that he does not really understand the gravity of the situation at hand. He has a sweet temper, but in his opinions he tends toward foolishness. When I raised the issue of Miss Wetherell's lunacy, for example, he was perfectly delighted by the idea. He said he wouldn't have her any other way. (IV.2.52)
As Devlin's statement indicates, Staines really is kind of oblivious to how much trouble he and Anna might be in; instead, he's just hung up on how besotted he is with Anna. It tells us a lot that he thinks "lunacy" could be a good thing, and actually suggests that his definition and everyone else's might be quite a bit different …
Direct Characterization
Sometimes, Catton just goes ahead and tells us what to think about the characters without relying on dialogue (inner or outer) or anything else. When she introduces us to Quee, for example, she gives us a pretty detailed run down on him, describing his "flair for caustic deprecation, most especially when that deprecation was self-imposed" and alluding to the fact that he "painted a very feeble picture whenever he spoke about himself, a practice that was humorously meant, but that belied, nevertheless, an excessively vulnerable self-conception" (I.9.3).
In those descriptions, she pretty much sums up some qualities of Quee we wouldn't have known about really any other way, since they don't really come out too much in Quee's dialogue or inner thoughts.