The Lady with the Pet Dog

By Anton ChekhovAnton Chekhov

Born in a small town in Russia, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is one of the greatest playwrights of modern time. Chekhov and his family moved to Moscow after his father had gone bankrupt, and it is in this city at the Moscow University Medical School that Chekhov had studied to become a physician. While at medical school, Chekhov published comic short stories and used the money to help support his family and schooling. He graduated in 1884 but gave up the career that his medical degree had prepared him for and became a devoted writer. He has once said, “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.” In 1888, he won the Pushkin Prize to award his literary excellence. After a long break from writing Chekhov started up again and produced his greatest plays: The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. These plays have made an impact in the theatrical world and it is in these plays that he met his wife: Olga Knipper, who was an actress in each one. Chekhov was rather unknown until after World War I when his works were translated into English. He was known for being one of the first to develop the stream-of-consciousness technique and for portraying people struggling to live their lives in the best way that they can. He disagreed with the moral finality in many stories and claimed that “the role of an artist was to ask questions, not answer them.”

Recap

Dimitry Dmitrich Gurov, a Moscow banker, is unhappily married to a woman that he does not love. Having a curiosity for life outside his marriage, he is frequently unfaithful. When Gurov spots a lady with a pet dog in the resort town of Yalta, he quickly makes her acquaintance and they engage in an affair. The lady introduces herself as Anna Sergeyevna, who too is on vacation from her family and is trapped in a loveless marriage. The two have secret rendezvous for a while until Anna’s husband calls her back home. Instead of mindlessly forgetting Anna like he does with his other women, Gurov cannot keep Anna off of his mind and concocts a plan to see her in the provincial city she resides in. When he sees Anna and her husband at theater show, Gurov surprises Anna when she is alone and shocked, she begs Gurov to leave and promises to come see him in Moscow. He consents, and after that night Anna and Gurov secretly meet every couple of

months. Although Gurov has been with many women, he admits that he is truly falling in love with Anna. The two continue to live a dual life and the story ends with them contemplating how they will go on this way.

Themes

Love & adulteryFate & free willMorality & the meaning of life

Terms

Point of view: The narrator’s outlook from which the events are depicted; the attitude towards the characters Objective point of view: Detached and impersonal, the narrator does not see into the mind of any one characterOmniscient narrator: An all-knowing, all-seeing narrator that presents the story in an impartial wayLimited omniscient narrator: The narrator is restricted to a single perspective of a major or minor characterFirst person narrator: The reader is restricted to the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a single characterStream-of-consciousness: The flow of thoughts and feelings of a character are revealed as they occur

Excerpts

“Across whose faces would suddenly flit a rapacious expression—an obstinate desire to take from life more than it could give” (216).“The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy…it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy be respected” (223).“They loved in him not himself, but the man whom their imagination created and whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they saw their mistake, they loved him nevertheless” (223).

Questions

Answer two of the following:1. What about Anna Sergeyevna captured the heart of Gurov and changed his

view as women being the “inferior race”? Is he really in love with her? 2. A curiosity of life is the motivation for many of the actions of the two

characters and inevitably brings them to live a dual life. Are Anna and Gurov victims of circumstance, or are they responsible for creating their own circumstances?

3. Had the story been written in Anna’s perspective, how would it have been different? What would the title be renamed?