Anton Chekhov’s, the Lady with the Pet Dog

He does not feel anything toward women and in fact, refers to them as “the lower race” (1) and that “their beauty aroused hatred in him and the lace on their linen reminded him of scales” (118). As the story ends, the readers learn about Gurov’s consciousness and that his feelings towards women have changed. The motive for his alteration begins with Gurov’s love for Anna, and later these feelings makes him “sleepless and restless” because of continuous thinking and dreaming about Anna.

The next silence comes after a week of continued daily meetings and foretells the relationship’s passage from casual to physically intimate.  Before the silence is noted, Dmitri and Anna are at a jetty admiring the sea and watching the boats come and go, and Dmitri is watching Anna closely; as she chatters aimlessly, he notices her movements and the shining in her eyes, all of which are the backdrop for the rising tension that peaks during a moment of silence:  ‘“The weather’s improved towards evening,” he said.  “Where shall we go now?  Shall we take a drive somewhere?”  She made no answer.’  Anna’s failure to respond (her silence) marks the height of the tension and is immediately followed by a sudden embrace, a passionate and romantic kiss, laden with the nervousness that comes with public indiscretion, and finally, the suggestion from Dmitri that the two go to a private place to consummate the relationship:  “Let’s go to your place…” he said softly.  And they both walked quickly’.  Once again, after a silence, the relationship escalates.  Chekhov uses the device repeatedly as the two fracture over Anna’s guilt and go their separate ways; the extended

Gurov, dissatisfied with his monotonous life, goes to Anna because he needs the scandal to relieve a numbness that has taken effect, not because he loves her. She merely reciprocates his affection, not out of love, but to escape the entrapment she feels from her marriage. In a subtle climax during his return home to Moscow, Gurov feels the agonizing absence of anyone he can talk to meaningfully about the personal secrecies of his life, specifically Anna. This intolerable sensation sends him to “S—,“ to find her. Only when Gurov is standing outside Anna’s house does he actually relate to her situation and form some genuine connection. “Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails…One would run away from a fence like that," thought Gurov, looking from the fence to the windows of the house and back again…He loathed the grey fence more and more, and by now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that that was very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning till night but that confounded fence” (p.230). With Gurov’s realization, he actually escapes his fenced in world and partially enters her miserable one. In sharing a connection, their emotions and psychological needs start to blend together and they become entrapped by the same fence, where inside, the two of them are alone and vulnerable in a shared arena. This isolation

Although love is about sacrifice for the significant other, it can also a very selfish emotion. During the story the when Gurov and Anna are in their affair she starts to complain and he, “could not help feeling bored as he listened to her...she buried her face on his chest and clung close to him,” (Chekhov 269), showing that he is not willing to listen to her when

Anton Chekhov hardly restrained from writing the dreary aspects of life during his writing career. Noted as one of Russia’s most prominent realist writers of the late 19th century, Chekhov’s work ranged from critical issues concerning the mental health system in “Ward No.6” to illustrating the tiresome cycle occurring for ordinary people sensing they are incomplete with their dull, normal life in “The Lady with the Dog.” “The Lady with the Dog,” in particular portrays characters of Chekhov’s facing an unreachable desire; Gurov and Anna. This desire emulates two contrasting forces represented by the double-lives the couple lives, one being that of realism and boredom, and the other of strict passion and romanticism. Gurov and “the lady with

The stories of Anton Chekhov mark a focal moment in European fiction. This is the point where 19th realist caucus of the short stories started their transformation into modern form. As such, his work straddles two traditions. The first is that of the anti-romantic realism which has a sharp observation of external social detail. It has human behavior conveyed within tight plot. The second is the modern psychological realism in which the action in typically internal and expressed in associative narrative that is built on epiphanic moments. In consideration of the two sides, Chekhov developed powerful personal styles that presage modernism without losing traditional frills of the form. This essay will discuss the Chekhov's portrayal of women.

The act of falling in love was an experience and privilege that was rare to come by in the society Romeo and Juliet live in. The blessing of marriage was used as an enhancement on one’s social status unlike how our society uses it to celebrate love. As the audience is exposed to more and more of the plot and events that happen in Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet, one realizes that love is never formally described or exposed in the play, it is more a shallow feeling that is hiding behind its truth which is infatuation. Romeo has himself, along with the audience for a short period of time believing that he is in love with Rosaline. However,

After becoming acquainted, Anna and Gurov “walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was a soft, warm, lilac color and there was a golden band of moonlight upon it” (Chekov 507). Later, when he is alone in his hotel room, Gurov reflects on her “slim, delicate throat, her lovely gray eyes” (Chekov 507) and his thoughts reveal that he has determined this young, vulnerable woman to be an ideal candidate for another one of his many affairs that he just cannot help becoming involved in. And as the story unfolds, the color gray reveals itself as an integral component in the sort of comfortable, yet, unresolved feeling that the relationship between Gurov and Anna emanates.

As the story unfolds, Gurov at first changes subtly. First of all he meets Mrs. Anna Sergeyevna. His attitude at first is still the same, he finds her as another victim of his little game that he plays. He sits and watches, searching his mind for a ways to get her attention like he does for every woman. He still looks at women in the same sort of fashion. Anna and Gurov start spending time with each other more and more, he still plays his game. Each time that he meets her and tries to coax her into have an ice or syrup, yet he still looks at her as “pathetic.” After their first kiss he begins to realize that there is something different about this girl. Unlike the usual women he messes around with, she feels guilty about engaging in this affair with him. Anna does not give him the satisfaction of playing the game along with him. As he spends more time with Anna he becomes fond of her presence. He starts learning more about her, when she talks him listens intently instead of getting bored and rolling his eyes. When Anna gets a letter from her husband asking for her to come home, Gurov acts like it isn’t a big deal, he still believes he is playing his game. At first he forces himself to believe he is ok, but after they are apart for a while he realizes that Anna isn’t leaving him. She follows him everywhere, not just in his dreams. He feels something that he has never felt before, he

Dmitri, before he loved Anna, was a dog, one who looked down on women and only thought of the pleasures and benefits he could receive from them. Stuck in an unhappy marriage with his wife to the point that he, “did not like to be at home” (Chekhov, 62). Dmitri, though enjoys the company of women, he acknowledged that “he could not get on for two days together without ‘the lower race’” (Chekhov, 62), the “lower race” referencing women. Consequently, this disgust of his own wife and desire for women causes Dmitri to cheat, “He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago -- had been unfaithful to her often” (Chekhov, 62). Dmitri liked to keep all his affairs simple and amusing, whenever one would begin to be too much work and/or unbearable, he would drop it and proceed to the next one. Though Dmitri is quite an observant person he would focus on the

In Oates’ story, Anna seems to accept that fate only strikes once and that, because of fate, she is stuck in her lifeless marriage. In the story it says, “This is fate, she thought, to be here and not there, to be one person and not another, a certain man’s wife and not the wife of another man” (Oates 230). Consequently, when she meets the other man and begins to experience strong emotions towards him, she contracts into herself and her confusion. She begins to have conflicts within herself about how it could even be possible to be married to one man, but feel like you cannot live without the other. All of this leads to mental and physical harm. This downward spiral finally leads to Anna coming to a realization. She believes that all along they are meant to be together and that because of this, her husband never truly matters. They belong in a separate dimension where fate brings them together. Chekhov’s story also involves destiny and fate, but for different reasons. The conflicts that Gurov and Anna meet are based more on a social level than a mental platform. Because of the setting and the time period, it is difficult for fate to take place in their lives. Both of them have arranged marriages which allows almost no input from them about the decision. In the beginning fate seems to be out of the question. Gurov sees no real cause for their meeting and sees her as another

Later in the story, during one of Anna's Moscow visits, she cries again and as Chekhov foreshadows, Gurov reacts similarly. This time Gurov slips off the bed, out from beneath Anna and sits in an armchair. Paying no attention to her sorrows he then, ". . . rang and ordered tea; and then, while he drank tea, she went on . . ." (309-310). Not only is Chekhov's foreshadowing similar in both stories, he also uses magnificent details in the setting that intensify the reader's interest.

We have always heard of the stories where people meet their future wife or husband in the most unpredictable places. These success stories presumes us to believe that love at first sight actually exists and that they're will be somebody waiting for us at the traffic light down the street. Things like this can happen I don't doubt it, but for all the people like Gurov, a known womanizer who is married to a woman he does not love or Anna, a frail, innocent woman who is married to a man she does not love makes us believe that there is hope. The story begins in Yalta; a seaport in Ukraine Gurov meets Anna. He begins to understand that she is much different than the other woman he has been with; she is both frail and innocent. Afterwards,

In 19th century Russian literature there was often a gender inequality depicted between the male and female characters. Women were expected to get married, start a family, and obey their husbands. Women often made sacrifices and married men they weren’t fond of in order to support their families. Anton Chekhov’s writing questions these gender relationships. The female characters have a strong presence within Chekhov’s works, and they transcend typical gender roles.

Marriage has many different meanings and the most traditional is religious. Theologically, it is a sacred union and equal partnership of a man and a woman that is given to us by God. For non-believers, it 's just a legal or formal recognized union between partners that are in a relationship. Lady with the Pet Dog, written by Anton Chekhov is a short story that focuses on two people that find themselves in love. They are not in love to the person that they are married to, but with each other. Dmitri is a professional banker who is nearly forty, has three kids, dislikes his wife, dislikes women in general, and carries on a number of affairs with neither regret nor much emotion. He has a low standard of women, and does not seem them as equals. Anna a young woman who is vacationing in Yalta without her husband is not satisfied with him, and the relationship she is in. Both partners seem to be unhappy with their life as a married spouse and decide to part take in an affair. Their motivation is driven by feeling discontent with the life they are currently living in with both their spouses. They both see the affair as a one night stand that happened, but little do they know that they will fall in love with each other. Many might argue that this is not real love, but an immoral adulterous relationship. My thoughts are a bit different, because I believe that love is found on what their heart desires. It is hard to predict when one will fall in love or with whom. A person can fall in