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ESCAPES GREAT AND SMALL:

FLEEING FROM REALITY IN CHEKHOVS UNCLE VANYA

Introduction

The second and least well known of the four great plays of Chekhovs mature years

(Bentley 119), Uncle Vanya has received a mixed reception since it was first published in the late

1890s (Meister 230ff). Although Chekhov strongly denied any connection (Gilman 102), the

play was quite clearly an adaptation of another play of his entitled The Wood Demon, written ten

years earlier (Peace 50). Approximately two-thirds of it consists of dialogue taken directly from

that play (Bristow 53). Conceived as a comedy, The Wood Demon had been a failure, and

Chekhov was moved to write concerning it: I hate that play and try to forget about it (quoted

in Peace 50). In Uncle Vanya, The Wood Demon is transformed into something other than comedy,

and it works (Bentley 120). Yet, despite the critical and popular success, there is little agreement

among critics as to what the play is about. This paper will suggest that in reworking The Wood

Demon into Uncle Vanya Chekhov shifted from the social to the psychological level, intending to

throw into high relief the defense (or escape) mechanisms that ordinary people employ when

confronted with a reality they are unable to cope with.

The Case for a Psychological Reading of the Play

Interpretations of the play have been numerous and varied, and mostly sociological in

nature. According to Styan, Uncle Vanya is about the socio-economic conditions in rural

Russia at the end of the nineteenth century [](116). He points out that [t]his play above all

his [Chekhovs] others presents a group of trivial people in order to show the dullness of life in

provincial Russia (ibid.). Along the same lines, Vladimir Yermilov, a mid-century Soviet critic,

wrote that the theme of Uncle Vanya is the life of little men, with its hidden sufferings and

self-effacing toil for the happiness of others [] (quoted in Gilman 136). Peace identified the

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central theme of the play as waste (57), in keeping with what Gilman characterizes as the

most prevalent reading of the play, namely, that it is a study in failure, wasted or ruined lives,

a portrait of disappointment, anomie, and despair (106). Injecting a slightly political note into

the interpretation, Stanislavsky, who played Astrov in the early productions of Uncle Vanya,

outlined the chief idea of the play as follows: The naturally gifted Astrov and the poetically

tender Uncle Vanya go to seed in a provincial backwater, whilst the blockhead of a professor

blissfully thrives in St. Petersburg, and along with others like him governs Russia (quoted in

Peace 60).

Other views have tended to be more philosophical. Magarshack sees it as a study in

contrast between the selfish idealism of Vanya and selfless idealism of Astrov, but by his own

admission, [t]hese two themes, however, do not coalesce nor do they lead inevitably to the

denouement in the last act [] (79-80). Elsewhere, he suggests that its principal theme [] is

not frustration, but courage and hope (quoted in Gilman 106). He also identified the second

theme of the play as the destruction of the environment through the indiscriminate felling of

trees (90). In the same vein, Karlinsky sees the contrast between the reality and value of

nature conservation on the one hand and the sterility of simplistic social theorizing on the other

[ as] one of the main themes of Uncle Vanya [] (65), while Yermilov, mentioned earlier,

elsewhere expressed the view that the main theme of the play [is] beauty and its destruction

(quoted in Gilman 105).

However, Yarmolinsky makes a convincing case that as a writer of fiction he [Chekhov]

was little concerned with social questions and less with political matters (9). Neither, as

Rayfield has pointed out, was he:

[] interested in metaphysical statements so much as in the chance stimulus and the words which make people formulate such statements. [] Chekhovs

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characters expound conflicting philosophies: the point lies not in the viability of the philosophies but in the forces that prompt characters to espouse them (187).

Bentley concurs that Chekhovs drama is not about ideas, suggesting that [i]t is not so much

the force Chekhov gives to any particular ideas as the picture he gives of the role of ideas in the

lives of men of ideasa point particularly relevant to Uncle Vanya (132). Even Karlinsky

recognized that Chekhov no longer bothered to infuse [the dramatic masterpieces of his last

years] with his current ideological preoccupations (65). Yarmolinsky comments: [] the heart

of the plays lies not in action or in programs, but rather in states of mind, in the ebb and flow of

feeling, in the nuances of inner experience (20). And Rayfield finds, in examining the plays,

that [t]he more mature the work, the more closely are both landscape and interior monologue

rendered through the psychology of the characters (191). Similarly, Styan observes that []

the toll paid by the mind and spirit is conveyed as a sensory experience constructed out of

noises heard in counterpoint with words, and neither words nor noises can be escaped by their

audience (116-7). Bentley states categorically: Chekhovs theater, like Ibsens, is

psychological (121).

Defense Mechanisms: The Escape from Reality

There can be little doubt that Chekhov was primarily interested in the inner lives of his

characters (Corrigan xix). But what precisely about their inner lives was he interested in?

Rayfield provides some insight. He writes:

[] a complex, changing, responsive character is evidently far more attractive to him [Chekhov] than a consistent monolith, who repeats the same actions and words. His criteria may be seen as those of a pathologist. Characters who are not diseased or in turmoil tend to bore him (191).

In the language of today, we would say that Chekhov was interested in dysfunctional

behaviour, and the particular brand of dysfunctionality he chose to focus on in Uncle Vanya is

the use of various escape devices to avoid facing harsh and painful reality.

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Nearly all Chekhovs characters, Rayfield writes, live in closed boxes, from which

[physical] escape is not easy (190) and Corrigan observes that the interiors in the plays are

always closely confined rooms (xxii). The closeness of the space creates a sense of

claustrophobia (Rayfield 191), a sense that is extremely apparent in Act II of Uncle Vanya, when

Serebryakov complains about the stuffiness of the room and his inability to breathe (Peace 60),

and, to a lesser extent, in the stifling outdoor air of the summer afternoon in Act I (Six Plays

178). In this claustrophobic atmosphere, the characters are unable to get away from each other

physically. Thus, each must have one ore more protective [psychological] escapes to which he

[or she] can resort if too much is demanded of him [or her] (Corrigan xxii). Regardless of the

nature of the escape, every one is a means by which the characters withdraw into their own

private worlds when outside demands became too great (ibid.) or when inner demands become

intolerable. In Uncle Vanya, the sense of entrapment and the need for escape is reiterated in Act

IV by means of the symbolic presence of the caged starling, a bird noted, not for the sweetness

of its song, but for its contentiousness and noise (Peace 68). Earlier in the play, in Act III,

Yelena gives voice to her desire to escape, to be free as a bird, to fly away (Six Plays 204). She

does get her wish by the end of the play, but it is Vanya and Sonya who are left sitting amid the

clutter of Vanyas office, his bed and his personal jumble of account-books, scales, and papers,

together with [ the] starling in [ the] cage and a map of Africa on the wall, all highly

suggesting the clutter of his mind and his ineffectual longing for escape (Styan 118).

But in a sense Vanya and Sonya had found their escape route already.

Escape into Work

The idea of work keeps recurring throughout the play like a motif in a musical

composition. In fact, the play begins with work. In Act I the curtain rises on Astrov complaining

to Marina that hes overworked. However, he also confesses that he has no opportunities for

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social life, since he is surrounded by dull and commonplace people, and that he loves no one,

with the possible exception of the old nurse herself. Later in the act we learn from Sonia that

Astrov is a conservationist and spends a great deal of time planting trees. Given that this work

is voluntary, we must conclude that Astrovs busy-ness is self-imposed. Putting together the

fact that Astrov is socially bereft and that he deliberately overworks himself, we can conclude

that Astrov is using work as an escape from the tedium of his humdrum existence. A man of his

vigour needs intellectual and social stimulation, and there is none to be had, so he throws

himself into work to drown out the insistent voice of his unmet needs. Just how dedicated he is

to his work can be seen in his reaction when he is called away to the factory on a medical

emergency: I suppose I shall have to go whether I want to or not. [] Damn it, this is

annoying (Six Plays 184). It is clear that he sublimates his passion for life into a passion for trees

and the environment, and into a dedication to curing the sick, inconvenient or traumatic as this

latter activity can sometimes be. That work is a form of sublimation for Astrov is apparent in his

readiness to neglect it under the spell of his admitted infatuation with Yelena, who is perceptive

enough to see through his passion for trees. On being invited to visit his estate, she tells him,

[] I have an idea that the woods do not interest you as much as you claim (Six Plays 185).

And after the brief interlude of his infatuation comes to an end with the departure of Yelena

and her husband, Astrov goes back to the sublimatory comfort of tree planting and to the

grinding routine of his medical duties. As Gilman has observed, [] work is always ready to

cede to love as the agency of salvation or renewal, until the game is played out, after which work

will once again claim its right to define how were supposed to live (135-6).

But Astrov is not the only character in the play to resort to the sublimation afforded by

work. We find Marina industriously knitting socks throughout the play, even on the sultry

summer afternoon on which the play opens. Likewise, Sonya is portrayed as hardworking, and

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as running the estate while Vanya pursues his love for Yelena. Like Astrov, Sonya is bereft of

love, and like him, she sublimates her passions through work. At the end of the play, more than

ever before, Sonya feels the hopelessness of her quest for love, and along with Vanya, who is

now induced to flee down the same escape route with her, she plunges into the comforting

routine of work as a form of therapy (Peace 69) in an attempt to stave off desperation

(Bentley 135). In Act IV, after relinquishing to Sonya his last hope of release, the bottle of

morphine, Vanya gives voice to this desperation: And now we must get busy at once; we must

do something, or else Ill not be able to stand it (Six Plays 218). In replacing love, however,

work not only takes on its predecessors urgency but also its dubiousness as a solution

(Gilman 135). It is, in fact, not a means to happiness, but a drug that will help them [the

characters in the play] to forget (Bentley 136). In the soulless boredom of [] routine (Peace

70), they will not find the solace they seek. Though several of the characters, including the old

nurse Marina and the insufferable Serebryakov, tout it as the antidote to idleness and futility

(Bentley 135), work does not bring the deep inner satisfaction they hunger for, only a sense of

being worked to death (ibid.).

The only character in the play who is unabashedly indolentand feels no guilt about it

is Yelena. While the others berate her for her idleness, accusing her of infecting them with it, she is

quite content to eschew work as either a way of life or as a means of escape, dismissing it as part

of the sentimental trappings of third-rate novels (Six Plays 201). And though she is as bereft of

happiness as the others, she has other means by which to deal with her lack of fulfillment.

That Chekhov intended to portray work as an escape in Uncle Vanya can be deduced not

only from the internal evidence in the play as presented above, but also from remarks he made

in his notebooks, such as the following: My ideal is to be idle and love a fat girl; and again:

To be idle involuntarily means to listen to what is being said, to see what is being done; but he

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who works and is occupied hears little and sees little (quoted in Gilman 137). The latter

remark, by far the more serious of the two, shows clearly that Chekhov understood the narcotic

power of work. He himself was a workaholic, and while this was out of necessity until his later

years, for he had debts to pay off (Yarmolinsky 12), money was not the only reason for which he

worked. When he moved to Melihovo, he would treat thousands of peasants in a single year

entirely free of charge, on the justification that his only solace was medicine (ibid.). Like his

characters, Chekhov, too, found that love eluded him, except perhaps in the last three years of

his life during his rather unconventional marriage to Olga Knipper (Corrigan xv). It is tempting

to speculate that there was an element of the autobiographical in the Chekhovs creation of the

characters in Uncle Vanya: perhaps he knew only too well the efficacy (or lack thereof) of

escaping into work. One cannot fail to hear his bitterness in the following remark: When a

decent working man takes himself and his work critically people call him grumbler, idler, bore;

but when an idle scoundrel shouts that it is necessary to work, he is applauded (quoted in

Gilman 137). In terms of the language of defense mechanisms, it seems that in taking on the

persona of a workaholic, Chekhov was using what psychologists call reaction formation: he

was cultivating the very opposite of the behaviour patterns he deeply wished to indulge in, and

this may well have been true in the case of Astrov as well.

Whatever the case may be in regard to Chekhovs own personal attitude to work,

however, he was writing against a historical backdrop, and this undoubtedly had its influence

on his use of the work motif in the play. Gilman remarks:

In perhaps no other modern culture has the question of work been so violent and melancholy an issue as it was in the Russia of the later nineteenth century and up to the Revolution, with its extremes of a depressed peasantry and a growing lumpen proletariat, and a class of idle, often parasitic, rich. Though Ivanov touches on it, Uncle Vanya is Chekhovs first play fully to engage the question of work (Three Sisters will take it even further), through characters who see it variously as

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arduous necessity, justification, or source of identity and who, whether they admit it or not, experience it largely as illusory satisfaction, if satisfaction at all (115).

Escape into Alcohol

Anotherperhaps more obviousescape mechanism one finds in Uncle Vanya is the

escape into alcohol (Peace 62), the classic remedy for despair (Gilman 117). This is another of

the many escapes Astrov resorts to. We discover this almost at the outset of the play, when the

old nurse reminds Astrov, following his refusal of her offer of vodka, that he has changed

tremendously. He has aged and has taken to drink. It is telling that while he turns down Marinas

offer of vodka on the grounds that he doesnt drink it every day and that the weather is too

stifling anyway (Six Plays 178), a few minutes later he orders the workman (who has come to call

him away to work) to bring him one, which he proceeds to drink with gusto, ironically halting his

oration on the forests in mid-sentence in order to do so (Six Plays 186).

Once again, Astrov is not alone in his use of alcohol as an escape. Vanya, under his

influence, has also turned to the bottle for comfort, as we learn in Act II. Here, Vanya drunkenly

pursues Yelena with declarations of love. She confronts him with his drinking, and he quite

openly acknowledges it as a means of escape. In response to her question, What for? he says:

Because in that way at least I experience a semblance of life. Let me do that, Yelena! (Six Plays

192). To Sonya, elsewhere in the act, he says in regard to his drinking: When the realities of life

are gone, or if youve never had them, then you must create illusions. That is better than

nothing (Six Plays 195).

Later in the act, Sonya confronts Astrov with his drinking, and extracts from him a

pledge never to drink any more. He is apparently faithful to his promise until the final act,

when Marina once again offers him a glass of vodka. With Sonya looking on, he accepts it,

declining, however, the offer of bread. As Gilman points out, the bread would have served to

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cut the effects of the alcohol, and Astrovs refusal of it is perhaps his way of saying that now

more than ever before he needed the escape provided by the alcohol (118).

Escape into Blame

Even on a surface reading, there is plenty of blame to go around in Uncle Vanya. In terms

of defense mechanisms, this would be called displacement. The most notable instance of

blame is that of Vanya accusing the professor of ruining his life (Peace 66) and preventing him

from reaching his full potential, becoming perhaps a Schopenhauer, a Dostoevsky (Six Plays

212). Closely allied to the strategy of blame is the tendency to see oneself as a victim, and Vanya

certainly does this. He carries around a map of injustice, a chart of perceived unfairness [].

Like Konstantin in The Seagull and, more darkly, Solyony in Three Sisters, Vanya tends to locate

the source of his anguish outside of himself (Gilman 124). But his view of himself as a victim is,

as Gilman has pointed out, really a function of his own sense of inadequacy rather than anything

the professor did: [H]e [the professor] may be any empty vessel, but it was Vanya himself who

poured into the available container his own imperiled or simply inadequate sense of self, his own

afflicted ego. Serebryakov is Vanyas mode of self-deception, not his traducer (133).

But if Vanya is a victim, Yelena is too (Peace 73). Seeing herself as a tragic, an episodic

figure (ibid.), she lashes out fiercely at Vanya, blaming him and the rest for her tedious and

dreary life: [ T]he doctor is right. You are all possessed by a devil of destructiveness; you

have no feeling, no, not even pity, for either the woods or the birds or women, or for one

another (Six Plays 187). In defense-mechanism terms, this is, in part, projection.

In Act III, Sonya blames Yelena for infecting them all with her idleness and taking them

away from their work. I am getting lazy and losing interest in my work and I cant help it, she

says (Six Plays 202). The most level-headed (and least dysfunctional) of all the characters in the

play, even Sonya succumbs to the temptation to blame. The guilt she feels over not doing her

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duty she must lay at someone elses door, for she is unable to take responsibility for her own

actions. She concludes, You must be a witch (ibid.).

Like Sonya, Astrov blames Yelena in Act III for the disruption in his life, accusing her of

being a predator, a beautiful fluffy weasel (Six Plays 207) who has contrived to seduce him.

Once again, the accusations seem unjustified, since it is Astrov who is forcing himself on Yelena

rather than the other way around. Yet, for Astrov, the displacement is necessary, for it is too

painful for him to admit that he, who proclaimed that his feelings are dead (Six Plays 197),

does in fact have feelings that are very much alive, even if they are only feelings of lust, not

love, nor even affection (ibid.). It is significant that in talking to Sonya about his feelings for

Yelena, he has to put the responsibility for them upon someone other than himself: If, for

example, Yelena wanted to, she could turn my head in a day (ibid.).

While all four major characters in Uncle Vanya exhibit tendencies towards blame, this

must be seen as the defense mechanism of displacement, for

[n]o character in Chekhov is ever the sole deliberate cause of anothers suffering []. Indeed, people dont so much cause each other pain as participate in a mutual incapacity to prevent it. In such a scheme or pattern there are degrees of responsibility, shading of innocence and guilt; but Chekhovs devils have at least the rudiments of wings and his angels the beginnings of horns (133).

Escape into Religion, Death, and the Afterlife

The escape into religion is primarily the refuge of one of the minor characters in the

play, the old nurse Marina. Marina offers this escape to nearly everyone she has occasion to

console, beginning with Astrov quite early in Act I, continuing with Sonya in Act III, and

ending with Telyegin in Act IV. However, it appears as an undercurrent, particularly in the

finale, in the words of Sonya: We shall hear the angels sing. We shall see heaven shining in all

its radiant glory. We shall see all the worlds evils our every pain, our suffering be

engulfed by Gods all-pervading mercy that shall enfold the earth. Our life will be peaceful,

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gentle, and sweetlike a childs caress. Oh, I have faith [] (Six Plays 223). The narcotic effect

of these words cannot but bring to mind the phrase opiate of the masses, but Sonyas faith

certainly serves to make her lifeand that of her unclemore bearable. It is a mark of

Chekhovs greatness as a writer that he was able to depict this solace that Sonya finds in

religion with the utmost sympathy and understanding (Karlinsky 46). It must be remembered

that [t]his is not Chekhov speaking. It is an overwrought girl comforting herself with an idea

(Bentley 136). Chekhov himself clearly did not share in Sonyas faith, and, though cognizant of

its value, very likely saw it as yet another means of escape. Karlinsky observes:

The tyrannical and pharisaic religious upbringing which Chekhovs father forced on his children resulted in a loss of faith by every single one of them once they became adults. While Anton did not turn into the kind of militant atheist that his older brother Alexander eventually became, there is no doubt that he was a nonbeliever in the last decades of his life (45).

Sonyas appeal to the afterlife in heaven surely conjures up the reality of death, which

itself must be seen as an escape, and this is how Astrov sees it, though not with quite the same

fervour as Sonya. For him, there is absolutely nothing to look forward to in this life and

perhaps, pleasant dreams will haunt us as we rest in our graves (Six Plays 217). In the words

of Gilman: [ T]hough the doctor and the young woman both speak of the grave and of the

potential solace beyond it, their tones and intentions are wholly different; where hes cynical

shes without stratagems, where he banters she flowers into eloquence (138-9).

There is an irony worth noting in this regard: Sonya (and, to some extent, Astrov) offer

death as an escape from the toils and labour of this life, which themselves are an escape from

something else. It appears that escapism (self-deception), like any other deception, is a chain

reaction: one escape leads to another, never to realization. This point is not lost on Peace, who

comments: No solution of the plays dramatic tension is put forward [at the end] other than

resignation [] (70). It is also interesting to note that while Sonya, Astrov, and possibly Vanya

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welcome death and a blessed release, the professor Serebryakov, for all his learning (or perhaps

because of it) complains that he must sit in gout-ridden old age with nothing to do but fear

death (Six Plays 189). For him death is no escape, as is evidenced by how shaken he is when he

comes face to face with it dodging Vanyas bullets.

Escape into Boredom, Apathy, and Feigned Indifference

Another persistent motif in Chekhovs playsand in Uncle Vanya in particularis

boredom. There are constants complaints that life is boring and that characters are bored. In

Uncle Vanya this is the ground that Yelena treads. In Act III, her petulant outburst: This tedium

is killing me. Oh, what am I going to do? (Six Plays 201) brings a well-deserved retort from

Sonya about there being plenty to do around the estate. What Sonya fails to recognize is that

Yelenas boredom is only a symptom and not the disease itself. But Chekhov understood

Yelenas boredom, for he himself, for all his workaholic ways, was capable of being frustrated

and bored, as his letters show [] (Karlinsky 32). Gilman explains:

[ I]n Chekhov, in the plays and fiction alike, to say that one is bored more often than not masks another condition, one more painful or dangerous to announce: distress, embarrassment, anger, grief, or fear. I want to add now some words from a letter by Chekhov of June 1889. Poor Nikolai [his brother] is dead. I have turned stupid and dull. Im bored to death. I have no desire, etc. etc. What could be clearer than that boredom here, apathy, is a defense against sorrow, a psychic emptying out designed to keep away the unbearable? (119)

Thus Yelenas boredom is a cover-up for other emotions: a way to dull the pain of her sense of

estrangement in this place, the strains of her marriage, her flash of attraction toward Astrov (ibid.)

Boredom is closely allied to feigned indifference, Yelenas prevailing attitude during

most of the early part of the play. The tea is cold, and Sonya exclaims, Oh, the tea is cold! in

disappointment. Yelenas reaction is: [ W]ell just have to drink it cold (Six Plays183). For

Peace, her readiness to drink it indicates indifference and a certain coldness within

herself (55). He notes that she drinks her cold tea sitting on a swing, yet the swing is

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the visual symbol of her own emotional attitude (ibid.). In Act II, this indifference

manifests itself in her seemingly unsympathetic attitude to her husbands

hypochondriacal ravings. Her indifference makes her come across as indolent and

apathetic, but she is in reality a sensitive and intelligent woman who exhibits a sharp

wit, a fine sensibility to others situations, and a generosity of spirit, as Gilman points

out (126). It is obvious that her indifference is put on: a defense against what she is not

able to have, a sour-grapes response to her intolerable situation. In the end, her feigned

indifference is her undoing, for both Vanya and Astrov (and to some extent Sonya)

misconstrue her, and in some ways she might thus be held partly responsible for the

eventual breakdown of relationships among the characters.

Escape into the Future

The future is a sovereign subject in Chekhovs last three plays (Gilman 115), and in

Uncle Vanya it is the particular province of Astrov. The impotence of the present is, for him,

offset by the Golden Age that will be ushered in in the future a thousand years from now (Six

Plays 186). Bentleys judgement of Astrovs grand dreams of the future is harsh: Astrovs

yearnings are not a radical vision of the future any more than the Professors doctrine of work

[expounded in the final act] is a demand for a workers state. They are both the day-dreams of

men who Might Have Been (136). Gilman concurs, suggesting that:

Chekhovs imaginative point is that time to come is always unreal or, what amounts to the same thing, not yet real, but that we habitually ignore or suppress this obvious truth, hypostatising futurity and so allowing it to live illegitimately, and most often destructively, in the present. In rather the same way we reify love and work (116).

Gilman points out that Chekhov once wrote in a letter []: I call peering into the future by no

other name but cowardice (121). He goes on to say: Chekhovs cowards [] displace their

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discontents, projecting them onto time to come, for absolution, transfiguration, or simply relief

(ibid.). Harsh as it may sound, every character in the play is ultimately a coward, not just

Astrov. Yelena even admits that she is: But I am a coward; I am afraid, and tortured by my

conscience (Six Plays 204). Every use of an escape device is an act of cowardice: it bespeaks a

lack of courage to face painful reality. But Chekhov is clearly not making that judgement on his

characters, even if they make it on themselves.

Other Escapes

Besides the escapes mentioned above, other escapes abound in Uncle Vanya. Vanya

himself finds Escape in Romantic Fantasies, pursuing love as an agency of salvation (Gilamn

115). His love for Yelena is just such an escape, since he knows there is no chance of her ever

reciprocating his love, and furthermore, he despises her indolence and is irritated by her

philosophizing. Still, he pursues her, fantasizing in Act II about how he would comfort her

during a thunderstorm (Six Plays 193). In these brief moments of fantasy he finds happiness,

however fleeting. But Vanya also escapes by means of regression: the Escape into Childhood. In

his most anguished moment in the play, after his confrontation with the Professor, he turns for

one brief moment to his mother almost as a small child (Peace 66) for sympathy and advice

with his pathetic plea, Mother, what am I to do? (Six Plays 212). But this maternal sympathy is

not forthcoming, and the regression quickly reverses. A similar regression is going on

simultaneously with Sonya, who turns to the old nurse for comfort. Sonya, however, stays in

regression much longer, snuggling closer to Marina (Six Plays 213).

Then there is Astrovs Escape into Misanthropy. Peace observes: In his job as a doctor he

works tirelessly to cure and help people, but unfortunately he no longer likes the human race:

he has become a misanthropist [sic] (71-2). A misanthropic doctor is surely an oxymoron. As a

doctor himself, Chekhov knew better than anyone else that a love of humanity was the only

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motivation possible for a doctor. In inventing a misanthrope in the person of Dr. Astrov, he was

not creating an implausible character, but one rather that had found an easy way out: an easy

way to cover up his ineptitude at dealing with people different from himself.

Of a very different sort is Sonyas Escape into Refinement. Surrounded by peasants and

rough folk on the estate, this earnest young woman finds refuge in a fantasy world of

refinement. Writing of her, Maragshack says:

The word she used most frequently when describing her idea of a perfect world is refinement: in this ideal world mens speech would be more refined, their movements more graceful and their attitude to women full of exquisite refinement. In asking Astrov to give up drink in the second act, Sonia again gives it as her reason that drunkenness did not become a man of such refinement as Astrov. Deeply religious as she is, Sonia even pictures life beyond the grave as bright, beautiful and refined (90).

Sonya also resorts to Escape into Self Delusion (Gilman 130), when in Act II, in spite of Astrovs

gentlemanly attempts to let her down gently, she finds herself strangely happy (Six Plays 198)

and convinces herself that Astrov hasnt understood her question (Gilman 130).

Yelena has her own battery of minor escapes, not the least of which is Escape into

Forgetting. This in psychological terms is suppression. In Act III, she soliloquizes: Oh, to be free

as a bird, to fly away from all those drowsy faces and their monotonous mumblings and forget

that they have existed at all! Oh, to forget oneself and what one is (Six Plays 204). But Yelena

also takes refuge in Platitudes. Magarshacks assessment of her is that [l]ike Helen of Troy, [

she] is a passive destroyer, a predator who is too indolent to be unfaithful to her old husband, a

fact she seems to disguise by her talk of loyalty, purity and a capacity for self-sacrifice (87).

Serebryakov, though he appears on stage less than the other main characters, has his

own set of escape mechanisms. His most obvious is Escape into Pomposity, made evident at his

very first entrance on the stage, when he asks for his tea to be sent to his room because he has

important matters to attend to. Long before Vanya confronts him, he must most certainly have

16

felt the truth of those accusations in his own soul, for he seems to have felt the need to cover up

feelings of inadequacy and insecurity with a pompous exterior. An individual with a healthy

sense of self-worth has no need for such false stratagems. He also makes capital use of Escape

into Hypochondria, as is evidenced in the second act. His treatment of and statements about Dr.

Astrov, while occasioned by his hypochondria, are actually further evidence that he is taking

refuge in a false grandiosity. And in a crisis, he takes refuge in Civility. As Bentley has observed,

the magnanimity with which he responds to Vanyas attack on him rings false (134).

Conclusion

If Uncle Vanya is about anything at all, it is about the strategies that people use to escape

from situations that are threatening to their selfhood and about the psychological, intrapersonal,

and interpersonal consequences of the use of these strategies. Critics have been unanimous in

remarking that the play ends without any sense of resolution. Peace says: The ending is

undoubtedly powerful, but it is created out of nothing. No solution of the plays dramatic

tensions is put forward other than resignation [] (70). Gilman says: Uncle Vanya isnt

positive, it doesnt leave us with any sort of optimism, but then it doesnt leave us pessimistic

either. Everything that has been suffered will remain, Sonyas words wipe out nothing of the

past (139). Magarshack says: In Uncle Vanya, the characters are static: they do not show any

growth or development as the characters of The Seagull do: they remain the same at the end of

the play as at the beginning (80). How does one account for this unusual state of affairs? The

reading provided for the play in this paper provides a highly satisfactory explanation: all the

major characters without exception chose to escape in some way from the realizations that came

to them during the course of the play. The point is: where there is escape there is no growth.

Only stasis. Stultifying, stifling, crushing, defeating stasis.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Bristow, Eugene K. Anton Chekhovs Plays. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

1977. Corrigan, Robert W., ed. Six Plays of Chekhov. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

1962. Gilman, Richard. Chekhovs Plays: An Opening into Eternity. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1995. Karlinsky, Simon. Chekhov: The Gentle Subversive. Chekhov: New Perspectives. Ed. by

Ren and Nonna D. Wellek. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984. Magarshack, David. The Real Chekhov: An Introduction to Chekhovs Last Plays. London:

George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1972. Meister, Charles W. Chekhov Criticism: 1880 Through 1986. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland &

Company, Inc., 1988. Peace, Richard. Chekhov: A Study of the Four Major Plays. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1983. Rayfield, Donald. Chekhov: The Evolution of His Art. Chekhov: New Perspectives. Ed.

by Ren and Nonna D. Wellek. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984. Styan, J. L. Chekhovs Dramatic Technique. A Chekhov Companion. Ed. Toby W.

Clyman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985. 107-122. Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, ed. The Portable Chekhov. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin

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