Krisztina’s Role in “Embers” by Sandor Marai

Sandor Marai’s Embers is a moody, claustrophobic drama about a hunting party in Hungary that is essential to the narrative structure, and one third of the original hunting party. Krisztina, the wife of Henrik who is already long dead at the novel’s opening, is a woman who is barely developed and is referred to as merely “the new countess” (11). Her first trait to be revealed: she was fond of crayfish (71). Krisztina’s minimalist development, however, is far from banal. Though subtle, it is nonetheless critical to the work’s overall themes of emotional abandonment, stifling social order,