As discussed in the "Character Roles" section, Calixta is as close as we get to a protagonist or main character for this story. Yet, like all the other characters in this story, she appears for only a few pages. Although the main chunk of text comes from her point of view, we still see only an eensy sliver of her life. There just isn't time to see more. But it's the sliver that Chopin has selected that's so interesting.