Awful Wedded Life: Olimpia constantly rejects Stănică's conjugal advances and refuses to have another child with him, which rapidly diminishes his affection for her. On a more realistic note, she's also aware of the fact that Felix can't offer her the life she craves, and that she would probably feel trapped and bored as his wife.

Felix has the occasion to meet Weissmann, a faculty colleague that awakens inside him a small passion for poetry. Felix never sees her again, and lives for years not knowing what happened with her, only to meet the now old Pascalopol by accident and be informed that Otilia moved to Latin America and married another wealthy man after her divorce. Felix, with the beginning of the First World War, becomes a doctor, afterward a university teacher, and has a successful marriage entering the high society.He will try later with Georgeta, a woman with whom Felix has a brief fling while Otilia is in Paris. He cannot explain what he feels, but he cannot leave Otilia and ends up marrying her, but lets her go when she finds a wealthy Argentine. He spends much of the book scrounging money and when he cannot scrounge it, he is happy to cheat whoever he can. 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.

Sour Grapes: Upon finding out that Felix wants to study medicine at the university, Aglae comments nastily that higher education is an unimportant whim and a waste of time. Her mother died and her step-father never officially adopted her, leaving her social situation uncertain and vulnerable to attack from the Tuleas, especially Aglae and Aurica, who constantly criticize her unfairly and cruelly for everything she does. 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. Titlul original al romanului a fost Parintii Otiliei" scriitorul avind in vedere ideea paternitatii.

Costake had not adopted Otilia, though it has been talked about, particularly by Pascalopol and this, too, remains a key sub-plot. Blatant Lies: Incredibly, almost everything that comes out of Stănică's mouth is a lie, designed to either make him look better or to extract money or benefits from others. Despite committing a crime, he keeps all the money and runs away, gets married to Georgeta and becomes a successful lawyer. But he realizes that he needs “ domnişoara Otilia, ea e micul viţiu sentimental” (Miss Otilia, she is my sentimental guilty pleasure), and the two eventually get married.

Costache becomes more and more scared of death, Stanica being a cause of it, thanks to his constant stories about tragedies. Enigma Otiliei (The Mystery of Otilia) is a Romanian novel written by George Călinescu and published in 1933.Titi, the youngest son, has been spoilt by his mother, who treats him like a young child (he is twenty-two).

Costache not to make any formal adoption procedure and leaves with Pascalopol at his house, leaving Felix surprised and disappointed. Attention Whore: Aurica wants men to pay attention to her, and she will often complain obsessively about being single and about the plight of unmarried women. She also stubbornly ignores Pascalopol's good advice and continues to wear a ton of makeup and walk up and down the boulevard, even though this approach has gotten her exactly zero results (aside that one time when a student from the Military Academy thought she was a prostitute and followed her home, only to be put off by the respectable appearance of the house).

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. Stănică is a complete jerkass who gives the reader a new reason to hate him with every scene he appears in, but it seems like he truly loves his family when he goes to visit his aging aunt for her birthday. In spite of the fact that the characters belong to different social strata and cultural backgrounds, the language is homogenous and the same linguistic devices are employed. When Costache is discouraged from doing that by a letter secretly written by Stănică, Pascalopol tries to get Costache to at least transfer money in a secret account for Otilia, offering to open up the account himself.