Dmitri is a Moscow banker and father of three who holds an arts degree and former training as an opera singer. Nearly middle-aged, he is unhappily married and harbors a cynical, misogynistic attitude toward women, whom he refers to as the lower race. Despite this stated contempt, he actively seeks female companionship to escape his dissatisfaction, frequently engaging in brief, detached love affairs.

Anna is a 22-year-old woman from St. Petersburg, currently living in the provincial town of S—. She arrives in Yalta alone, ostensibly for health reasons, but largely to escape her stifling marriage to a government bureaucrat. Possessing a strong moral sensitivity, she feels torn between her desire for a pure, honest life and her desperate need to experience something better than her current circumstances.

Gurov's wife is a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows who considers herself an intellectual. She uses phonetic spelling, reads extensively, and addresses her husband formally by the name Dimitri. Assertive and dignified, she maintains an independent existence within her marriage, seemingly aware of her husband's infidelities but choosing to tolerate them with distance and condescension.

Anna's husband, Von Diderits, is a government bureaucrat of German descent. He is a tall, stooping man with side-whiskers, early baldness, and a sugary smile. Highly focused on his bureaucratic career, he displays an obsequious nature around his superiors, a trait that deeply alienates his young wife.