She begins with the background story of her stepfather, Efimov, a talented but self-obsessed violinist, whom she describes as "the strangest and most extraordinary person I have ever known" and a man whose powerful influence over her affected the rest of her life.

[2] Efimov's madness brings terrible poverty and discord to the family, and leaves the child with a premature and painful insight into the dark side of human emotions.

The final chapters describe Netochka's teenage years growing up in the household of the gentle and maternal Alexandra Mikhailovna and her cold and distant husband Pyotr Alexandrovitch.

She forms a deeply empathetic relationship with Alexandra Mikhailovna, but is troubled by her friend's painfully solicitous attitude toward her husband, and by what appears to be calculated indifference and dissimulation on his part.

Netochka suspects some mystery from their past, and eventually a clue presents itself in the form of a letter that she accidentally discovers pressed between the pages of an old book in the library.

It is a letter to Alexandra Mikhaylovna from a distraught lover, lamenting the necessity of their final separation, and grieving for the irreparable harm he has caused her reputation and her marriage.

According to Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky's ultimate aim, though it remained unrealized, was "to portray a character that unites a dedication to art with an equally firm commitment to the highest moral-social ideals.