60 pages • 2 hours read
Elif ShafakThree Daughters Of Eve
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Nazperi “Peri” Nalbantoğlu
Content Warning: This guide section contains discussions of substance misuse and the loss of a child.
Nazperi “Peri” Nalbantoğlu is the protagonist of the book and the character through whose perspective the story unfolds. As the book opens, Peri is married to an older Turkish man, Adnan, and settled in Istanbul, where she lives a domestic life as a mother to three. She was born and raised in Istanbul and is the youngest of three siblings. She spent some time abroad when she was a university student at Oxford.
Peri’s defining quality is her confusion, and she embodies the theme of Navigating Conflict About Belief and Faith. Having grown up in a household divided on faith and belief, Peri constantly found herself caught in the middle of her mother’s religiosity and her father’s skepticism. Peri’s inherent tendency to avoid conflict or confrontation of any kind causes her to be perpetually stuck in the middle, unable to openly take a side. However, her attempts to avoid external conflict lead her to internalize the confusion instead, and she carries this with her to Oxford. Thus, when faced with the repeating questions of faith and belief in her equation with Shirin and Mona, Peri is forced to contend with this internal conflict through her exploration of God in Azur’s seminar.
Another character trait that defines Peri, especially in the past, is shame. Having grown up deeply impacted by the unprocessed trauma of witnessing her brother’s death and being shamed and blamed for it, Peri often responds to the world around her from a place of shame. She feels shame at not being as confident as Shirin or as devout as Mona; she feels shame at her feelings for Azur and indulging in a sexual encounter with a fellow student her age. A part of this conditioning also stems from Peri’s upbringing, having been raised by a devoutly religious mother who ascribes to the expectations of morality placed on Muslim women. Thus, as a young girl, Peri feels shame around what are otherwise regular experiences, like getting her first period; even as a more self-aware and educated young woman, this shame prevents her from speaking up for Feride when family members subject her to a virginity test.
Both Peri’s confusion and the shame she consistently feels translate into passivity on her part. Unsure of which side to take in any situation and afraid of being shamed, Peri often finds herself frozen with indecision. She is unable to take sides in her parents’ or her friends’ arguments, and she is equally incapable of acting when faced with more pressing circumstances, such as the committee meeting about Azur. However, this is where Peri makes true progress throughout her life. Peri, in the past, is an entirely passive character; Peri, in the present, chases after the thieves who steal her bag, voices her honest, even controversial opinions at the dinner party, and eventually reaches out to both Shirin and Azur. The past and present timelines alternate to paint a picture of who Peri was and who she has become. Her character arc is firmly focused on moving from a place of passivity rooted in shame and confusion to a place of action bolstered by perspective and understanding.
Mensur Nalbantoğlu
Mensur Nalbantoğlu is Peri’s father. A staunchly secular man, Mensur is constantly at odds with Peri’s mother, Selma, with whom he does not see eye-to-eye due to the latter’s religious beliefs. Mensur is the parent whom Peri is closer to, despite her refusal to take sides outright. Peri’s closeness to her father is reciprocated by her father’s deep love and pride in his daughter. He is extremely encouraging of her academic exploits, and Peri’s admission to Oxford is, in truth, Mensur’s dream: He believes education will save the family, and he sees Peri as the person fit to do so. Mensur is also a deeply loving and accepting parent. Peri feels comfortable enough to confide in him about developing feelings for a man when she recognizes her infatuation with Azur; Mensur, for his part, reiterates his love for Peri, reassuring her that she can never do something that causes him to reject her.
While Mensur’s love for Peri as a parent is a source of strength and support for her, he also has his own biases. Despite their closeness, Peri can never bring up the baby in the mist to her father after the first time due to his dismissal and disappointment when he first learns of it. Mensur is unable to hold space for anything that exists outside the realm of the rational. He is also unable to see the role it plays in the lives of the people around him, including Selma. While Mensur claims that he does not believe in religion as a sense of false security, he nevertheless seeks comfort in and misuses alcohol; this is a vice he is unable to give up, even following a heart attack. By painting Mensur as a flawed and complex character, Shafak remains neutral on the matters of faith and atheism in her storytelling, as she does not elevate Mensur just as she ensures Selma has redeeming qualities as well.
Selma Nalbantoğlu
Selma Nalbantoğlu is Peri’s mother. Unlike her husband, Selma is a devout and practicing Muslim, and she resents her husband for his lack of adherence to Islamic practices. She particularly takes issue with Mensur’s indulgence in alcohol, and the different belief systems husband and wife espouse is the biggest source of contention in the household.
Peri is closer to Mensur than Selma, and this is partially because Selma tends to be critical and judgmental of her daughter. She blamed Peri for her twin brother’s death despite Peri being a young, unknowing child herself, and this bitterness erects a wall between mother and daughter for the entirety of their lives. She shows high praise for Hakan’s new bride and is annoyed at Peri missing the henna night, making it clear that she would prefer her daughter to prioritize ritual and tradition over education. Despite the distance between mother and daughter, however, Peri eventually comes to understand that Selma has not had an easy life; religion and faith have lent her strength in this context, as she has endured more than Peri explicitly knows.
Professor Azur
Professor Azur is Peri, Shirin, and Mona’s old professor at Oxford. He taught a seminar on God. After complaints about his arrogance, purported cruelty toward students, and claims of inappropriate relationships with them, Azur was disgraced and forced to step down from teaching and administrative duties.
Throughout the story, Azur is presented alternately through the perspective of the students who look up to him, like Shirin and Ed, or the students who abhor him, like Troy. For those who praise him, Azur is akin to God himself, with an ability to change lives; to those who do not, Azur’s tendency to play God speaks to his megalomaniacal trait. Peri herself experiences Azur as someone to be in awe of even as she struggles with both her infatuation with him and her questions about his experimental approach to teaching his students.
Only toward the end of the book does Shafak present a more humanizing view of Azur. When the narrative reveals his backstory—his complicated relationship with his mentor and his past romances filled with heartbreak and betrayal—Azur finally becomes a complex character. This helps explain some of the biases and flawed decisions that he made during his time as a professor, both academically and personally. Azur’s character arc explores the theme of Power Dynamics in Institutional Spaces as he wields significant power over his students throughout the text. Shafak also uses his character to highlight that, in conflicts over belief and faith, even a balanced view can be biased.
Shirin and Mona
Shirin and Mona are two Muslim women that Peri befriends during her time at Oxford. Shirin is of Iranian descent. After Iran moved away from secularism, her father moved her family across Europe before they eventually settled in England. As a result, Shirin is staunchly atheist and deeply disdainful of religion in general and Islam in particular. Mona is an Egyptian American woman who, in contrast to Shirin, embraces her religion and faith and chooses to wear the headscarf. She identifies as a “Muslim feminist.”
Shirin and Mona are important to Peri’s journey of Navigating Conflict About Belief and Faith. They are intelligent, educated Muslim women, like Peri herself, from a similar part of the world. They have also lived away from their home countries, exposing them to different perspectives and world views. Despite or because of this, both Shirin and Mona have concretized views on belief and faith, albeit opposing ones. This certainty is what Peri lacks, and Shirin and Mona’s contrasting views offer her a glimpse into how people can arrive at each belief system irrespective of gender, generation, culture, and upbringing.
Shirin, Mona, and Peri, as a triad, also speak to the theme of Power Dynamics in Institutional Spaces. Their entire friendship is based not only on ideas of God but also on Azur’s recommendation to Shirin that she engage with the “other” in a way to explore God. Peri discovers this orchestration much later, and it unsettles her, as she understands how the friendship she shares with Shirin and Mona is a result of Azur’s experimentation. This does play into their dynamic eventually, with Peri’s confrontation with Shirin and her refusal to testify on behalf of Azur causing a rift between herself and Shirin in particular. However, there is also a real bond that the three women forge through their interactions. Peri and Shirin remain independently in touch with Mona over the years, and when Peri and Shirin reconnect, there is real joy and relief at reestablishing a relationship. This underlines how Shirin, Mona, and Peri’s relationship exists above a thematic or narrative function in the book; the women enjoyed a real friendship as well.
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