Elizabeth Costello is a fictional well-known author from Australia, and she is the mother of John Bernard. Although her career is in writing, Elizabeth has taken a strong interest in animal rights. She wants to use her platform to support this cause. She is both a narrator and a protagonist, although her characterization is non-traditional due to the metafiction genre of the text. Elizabeth is intelligent and well-spoken, conflicted, and hypocritical in her values. She has a tendency toward rambling, but when viewed from afar, her lectures have a notably logical structure which mirrors her arguments against using only reason-based thinking. Although she is an animal rights activist, Elizabeth admittedly does not know her own intentions and wears leather while scorning the exploitation of animals.

Elizabeth is a non-traditional protagonist because she is a flat character, a trait common in allegories and metafiction. The dynamics of the story are carried within the lectures and discussions, the plot, and the themes, rather than through the characters. By writing Elizabeth and the other characters as static, Coetzee focuses on the novel’s themes and philosophical ideas. Elizabeth is an auxiliary narrator; she transitions into a narrating role while giving her lectures and responding to O’Hearne’s questioning.