Halla is the protagonist of the novel, and her journey is one of self-discovery and empowerment. Introduced as a 36-year-old “respectable widow” of “no particular wealth and no particular beauty” (16, 6), she is initially imprisoned by her deceased husband’s relatives, Aunt Malva and Cousin Alver, who wish to force her into a marriage so that they can control her unexpected inheritance from her recently deceased great-uncle, Silas. Although she has no true wish to die, she is desperate to regain some form of control, so she plans to die by suicide, using the sword hanging on the wall. Her decision is also based upon practicality, for she knows that if she dies before marrying anyone, her inheritance will go to her nieces and not to her greedy in-laws.

The pragmatic Halla is a housekeeper by trade and temperament, possessing a wealth of mundane but essential knowledge about foraging, cooking, and managing resources. While Sarkis knows how to fight, Halla knows how to survive from day to day, and her extensive skills in this area earn his eventual respect and admiration. Beyond her practicality, Halla’s primary tool for navigating the world is her relentless intellectual curiosity, and she soon demonstrates that her incessant questioning is a sophisticated survival strategy.