Georgina (Gina) Vitay

The narration frequently takes place from Gina’s perspective, both as a girl and as an adult. At the beginning of the novel, Gina is a spoiled girl from Budapest who is distraught when her father, the General, plucks her from their home without warning and enrolls her in the Bishop Matula Academy, a Calvinist institution in the faraway town of Árkod. Believing herself to be more worldly and mature than her provincial classmates, many of whom are quite poor and on scholarships, Gina initially has trouble fitting in. She antagonizes her classmates by insulting them and ridiculing their prized school traditions, one of which entails being married to an item from the class inventory, and sees herself as more of a woman because she has a “real man” (54) courting her back in Budapest. Throughout most of the novel, the tension that Gina experiences in relation...