Karakterler

Adnan Bey

Over fifty, he is a very wealthy and refined gentleman who has dedicated his entire life to his daughter Nihal and son Bülent since the death of his former wife. However, when he sees the young and fresh Bihter, he is captivated by her joy for life and proposes to her, desiring to experience a second spring. He tries to push away the possibility that Bihter only married him for his wealth, losing himself in the dream of love. For a long time, he is naive and well-intentioned enough to remain unaware of the betrayal in his home, the forbidden love between his wife and his nephew. He always tries to be self-sacrificing toward Bihter.

Behlül

Adnan Bey’s nephew, Behlül, is a young, very handsome character who lives in a European style and takes no responsibility. He rushes through the entertainment life of Istanbul, the theaters and singing halls of Pera. With Bihter's arrival at his uncle's mansion, he seeks a new thrill and sets his mind on winning Bihter. In a short time, he begins a forbidden love affair with Bihter. However, due to his flirtatious and fickle nature, he becomes bored with Bihter's suffocating, demanding love. As an escape, he targets the innocent, blossoming Nihal. By reaching the stage of engagement with Nihal, he believes he will both rid himself of Bihter and regain his uncle's trust. His irresponsibility causes the destruction of the entire novel.

Bihter

She is the beautiful and proud daughter of the Melih Bey Entourage. Rebelling against her mother Firdevs Hanım's flighty, pleasure-seeking life and bad reputation, she wants to take refuge in an honorable and wealthy marriage. She accepts the marriage proposal from Adnan Bey, who is her father's age, with the hope of changing her social status and escaping her mother. However, after marrying, she feels that the magnificent mansion does not satisfy her and that her womanhood and youth are being wasted. This feeling of emptiness begins to draw her toward Adnan Bey's womanizing nephew, Behlül. After becoming completely swept up in the whirlwind of a forbidden love, she is torn between her moral values and her passions. When she learns that Behlül will marry Nihal, her pride and sense of vengeance drive her toward irrevocable, destructive decisions and a tragic end.

Firdevs Hanım

She is the last shining star of the Melih Bey Entourage. Since her youth, she has been fond of luxury, male attention, and amusement. She resorts to all sorts of tricks to prevent her era from ending. Unable to accept that she is aging, she struggles to look young with dyes and flashy outfits. She views her daughters (Peyker and Bihter) as rivals but supports them in making wealthy marriages to maintain her own living standards. After settling into the mansion, she is the one who changes the course of events, senses all the intrigues, and keeps the strings in her hands.

Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil

He was born in 1866 in the Eyüp quarter of Istanbul, into a merchant family that had come from Uşak. His father, Halil Efendi, dealt in carpets; his mother was Behiye Hanım. After the neighbourhood school in Mercan he entered the military middle school at Fatih. When the war of 1877-78 shook the family trade they moved to İzmir in 1878; he finished school there, then learned French at the Mekhitarist school, and the French novel opened before him. In his twenties, while teaching French in İzmir and working at the İzmir branch of the Ottoman Bank, he began to write. In 1884 he founded the journal Nevruz with friends, and in 1886 the newspaper Hizmet with Tevfik Nevzat; his first novels were serialised there. In 1893 he moved to Istanbul and took a post in the tobacco administration that would keep him sixteen years. He found his own voice after joining the Servet-i Fünun circle in 1896. In Blue and Black he told of a young man who dreamt of becoming a poet and watched his hopes come apart; in Forbidden Love, of a passion tightening inside a mansion on the Bosphorus. Censorship silenced the journal in 1901 and the group scattered. After the constitutional revolution he taught at Darülfünun, and from 1909 to 1912 was chief secretary to Sultan Reşad. His later years passed in Yeşilköy, writing his memoirs; in 1937 the suicide of his son Vedat in Tirana broke him. With long, woven sentences and a heavy vocabulary he gave the Turkish novel a depth of inward observation it had not known, and built his plots to the measure of Western fiction. In his last years he simplified his own books for a new readership. He died in Yeşilköy on 27 March 1945.

Nihal

Adnan Bey's only daughter, who grew up deprived of maternal love, is hypersensitive and a hypochondriac. She is very fond of playing the piano and daydreaming. With the arrival of a stepmother in the house, she has to share her father's affection and sinks into melancholy like a flower fading day by day. Approaching marriageable age, she clings tightly to the fake love Behlül directs toward her. She starts to see Behlül as a savior angel. However, with her illness (fainting spells) and as she begins to uncover the secrets of the house, she discovers that her whole life is built on a lie and becomes one of the tragic victims of the novel.