She gets rid of Simion by having him sent to a psychiatric ward, and refuses to even say his name, let alone visit. for the simple motif than it propose only few admirable performances and the novel seems be a pretext for a gallery of characters. She Is All Grown Up: At the end of the book, Felix meets up with Pascalopol by accident and he shows him a photo of Otilia. After that he sells different proprieties across the city (he is a wide rental lord in the capital) and brings in the house a maid named Paulina.

By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Arranged Marriage: Costache's first marriage was arranged by his and his bride's family, and he had no say in it.Because of this, she lashes out continuously at the youthful, beautiful, educated and desirable Otilia, either directly or by badmouthing her to anyone who will listen. Pascalopol feels like he can't keep up with her, and is jealous that Felix's youth enables him to follow Otilia up every tree she wants to climb. Needless to say, her children failed spectacularly to live up to their names: Olimpia's marriage disintegrates and her child dies because of her negligence, Aurica is a frustrated and desperate old maid and Titi is mentally challenged. When Costache balks at the thought of spending money, Pascalopol offers his own lawyer and assures him that he will take care of everything. She criticizes Otilia unfairly for supposedly being easy and cavorting with many men, when her eldest daughter had a child out of wedlock and her youngest daughter had no sense of shame and considered even the most inappropriate things men were telling her as acceptable.

While abortion still carries a stigma today, having premarital sex wouldn't destroy somebody's reputation. He also has trouble concentrating, and stops the tutoring session after only half an hour, claiming a headache. If you enjoy Balzac or any bourgeois comic novels with complex plots, conniving characters and innocent young men abroad, then you will certainly enjoy this, one of the foremost Romanian novels. Titi, the youngest son, has been spoilt by his mother, who treats him like a young child (he is twenty-two).Costache agrees and gives him a third of the money, but keeps the rest with him, which allows Stănică to rob him of it, leading to Costache's death. The book translates from Romanian as "Otilia's Enigma" and describes the following actions in a historical period of a few years before the First World War. She loves them very much, but she refuses to see their glaring inadequacies, and enables their self-destructive behavior. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The action centers around Felix Sima, a student at the University of Medicine who comes to Bucharest to live under the guardianship of his uncle, Costache Giurgiuveanu.