the stories of chekhov: summaries

8/9/2019 The Stories of Chekhov: Summaries

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CHEKHOV IN ANATOLIA--------------------THE BEAUTIESWhen the narrator was young he took a long, dusty and gruelling journey across the steppe with his grandfather. They stopped at the house of an Armenian and the Armenian's daughter, who brought the tea, was so beautiful that everyone felt sad and not aroused to desire or ecstasy but simply as though struck by lightning. Some years later, travelling by train, he sees another beauty, a stationmaster's daughter who, unlike the Armenian, lacks regular or individually interestingfeatures but there is delight in her every movement. Again sadness fills the air as the train steams away and the guard lights the evening candles.

THE WIFEThe narrator, who is writing a History of Railways, receives an anonymous letter asking him for help to support a village suffering from an influx of sick and homeless refugees. He and his wife live estranged on separate floors. The letterdisturbs his longing for peace and literature and he invites a local landowner to organise a relief effort. The landowner is cynical about the peasants and therelief effort, while the estranged wife resents the intrusion on her own reliefwork. The narrator demands that she stop holding meetings at his house and insists on examining the paperwork for her project. He makes a large anonymous donation and then prepares to go away to Petersburg. But instead he goes to visit thecynical landowner and encounters the doctor from the relief effort who insults him. He promises to provide funds to the doctor and returns to tell his wife that

he is a changed man. She bursts into tears and runs out, leaving him to resumework contentedly on his History of Railways.

EXCELLENT PEOPLEVladimir fancies himself a literary man; he writes book reviews. His sister Vera is a young widowed physician who doesn't practise. She lives with Vladimir andbroods about the idea of non-resistance to evil. Finally, she abruptly announces that she is leaving to do vaccination work in the provinces. Vladimir doesn't regret her leaving. He continues to write his articles, falls ill, and dies. Thenarrator doesn't know what happened to Vera.

THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATEAn examining magistrate and a doctor are driving to an inquest. The former tells

the latter of a woman who predicted that she would die straight after giving birth. The doctor suggests that she must have poisoned herself. The magistrate notes that her husband had had an affair but resists the doctor's conclusion at first. Finally he accepts that the doctor is right and admits that the woman was his own wife.

HAPPINESSTwo shepherds watch over a flock at night and the overseer from a big estate sits nearby. They discuss rumours of a local man possessed by the devil and of caches of treasure supposedly buried in the area. The overseer makes a sad and mocking remark about the elusivess of earthly fortune and the inevitability of dyingwithout knowing what happiness is like. The older shepherd wonders why it's only old men who look for treasure and what use earthly happiness is to men who migh

t die any day. The two shepherds and the sheep stand pondering together.

ON OFFICIAL DUTYAn examining magistrate and a doctor arrive in a village to conduct an inquest on a suicide. They are met by an old constable who takes them to view the corpsein an old zemstvo hut. While the doctor leaves to visit a rich acquaintance, the young magistrate remains with a local constable, brooding on the story of the suicide and the gulf between this life of official duty in the backwoods and hisdream of entering Moscow society as a proven professional. The doctor returns to take the magistrate to stay with the rich acquaintance. He passes a pleasant ev


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ening but is troubled by thought of whether humans are organically linked or just bits of life, accidental fragments. The following morning the Constable arrives and asks them to do their duty by conducting the inquest. Without a word theyleave to do so.

--------------------MISERYA dejected sledge-driver on a snowy night takes customers home. He tries to tell them that his son died of a fever a few days ago but nobody is interested. At night in the stables he feeds his mare and tells her about his son's death, inviting her to consider how she would feel if a colt of hers died. She munches, listens and breathes on his hands.

HUSH!A 4th rate journalist spends the night writing an article. With farcical self-aggrandisement he demands silence, tea and awed respect, surrounding himself withbusts of celebrated writers and railing at the agonies that writing brings. Tyrannizing and domineering over the little anthill that fate has put in his power,how different is this despot here at home from the humble, meek, dull-witted little man we are accustomed to see in the editor's offices!

AN INCIDENTTwo children wake to find that their cat has had kittens. They treat them like dolls, making houses for them out of boxes and allocating a toy horse to be their

father. As the narrator says, domestic animals play a scarcely noticed but undoubtedly beneficial part in the education and life of children. When their unclearrives with his dog Nero they decide that the dog, being alive, is a more suitable father than the toy horse. But while they are dining the footman comes in and announces that Nero has eaten the kittens. The adults are unmoved. Only the children and the mother cat are affected by this incident.

CHAMPAGNEThe narrator recalls a time when he and his wife lived almost alone in a station house in the steppe. There was no distraction but the women's faces in the passing trains and the spiked vodka, but he had won two bottles of champagne in a bet and he and his wife opened the first bottle on New Year's Eve. The bottle slipped from his hand but he caught it and laughed at his wife for superstitiously p

redicting bad luck. He walked out into the moonlit night, mocking the idea thathis life could get any worse than it already was. When he returned to the station his wife's young aunt, a beautiful woman of easy virtue, had arrived on the late train. He started a devilish love affair with her and now he is on the street.

THE LOTTERY TICKETA middle class man, quite satisfied with his lot, discovers that his wife has one of the two numbers needed to win 75,000 roubles in the lottery. Before checking whether she also has the second number, he fantasises about winning. First heimagines a life of luxury in the country. Then he imagines travelling abroad. But the thought that his wife would be with him begrudging him every bit of her winnings sours his mood. He notices for the first time that she has aged and is pl

ain while he is still young. He thinks of her grasping relatives who would wanta share of the money and hatred begins to stir in his breast. In triumph he finds that she has not got the second number. The untidiness of their room suddenlyannoys him and he threatens to go out and hang himself from the nearest tree.

BAD WEATHERKvashin's wife and mother-in-law are staying in their summer villa in the rain,missing Kvashin who is working and staying at the flat in town. The wife decides to pay a surprise visit to Kvashin but comes back reporting that the flat is empty and Kvashin is deceiving them. Without their noticing, the weather clears an


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d the sky becomes blue. Kvashin arrives and, having learned from his porter of his wife's visit to the flat, has a ready-made excuse for his absence. The mother-in-law and wife look at each other in joyful astonishment, as though beyond all hope and expectation they had found something precious, which they had lost. Kvashin thinks that the women are socially vulgar but it's nice to spend a day ortwo of the week with them.

A PLAYAn author is visited by a woman who insists on reading aloud to him a play she has written. It begins by discussing whether education is good for the common people and quickly turns into romantic melodrama. The author fumes, lets his mind wander, drifts into dreamlike illusions. Finally, with a yell, he dashes a paperweight down on the woman's head. We are told that the jury acquitted him.

IN TROUBLEThe manager and staff of the town bank are arrested for fraud. Avdeyev, one of the committee of auditors, laughs at their downfall and sees no reason why he should be implicated since he only signed whatever papers he was asked to sign. Hehas an unsecured loan from the bank but it's not his fault since the manager forced it on him. To his surprise he is brought to trial but his conscience is clear. Only his restless stomach and his aching leg register distress. The court proceedings are a mystery to him and when he is sentenced to exile he assumes thatthis is only a provisional finding. Only when his ruined wife and son come to see him off does he realise that his fate has been decided and that his past has g

one forever.THE KISSA regiment arrives in town and is invited to dinner at the house of a local retired General. Ryabovitch, a shy unprepossessing man, is daunted by the glittering surroundings, which he barely manages to take in, other than to notice the impressively artificial performances of the General's welcoming family. He follows his colleagues to a game of billiards and, on his return from the games room, loses his way. Stepping into a darkened room he is kissed by a young woman who is evidently awaiting her lover. Realising her mistake she flees, but the encounterstimulates Ryabovitch's imagination so that everything suddenly has a newly heightened interest. It comes to him that love is both very ordinary and very delightful. The regiment leaves town and when it returns there is no invitation back t

o the General's house. Ryabovitch's illusions fade away and he walks by the river with a new awareness that the whole of life flows away like a pointless joke.When he gets back to camp he learns that the General has after all summoned hiscolleagues to dinner but he decides not to join them and goes to bed.

KASHTANKAKashtanka the dog loses her master, a drunken carpenter, and is taken in a by aman who turns out to be a professional clown. In the clown's house are a cat, agander and a pig who practise tricks. One night death enters the house in the form of an invisible stranger and the gander dies, leaving the other animals withan inkling that they too will one day die. Kashtanka must take the gander's place in the clown's act but on her debut the carpenter and his son are in the audience and she runs to them. Her period with the clown soon seems like a dream.

A LADY'S STORYThe female narrator remembers her youth in the country and Pyotr Sergeyitch whorode gaily in the rain with her and talked nonsense about turreted castles and the taste of cucumbers. But he was poor and she had rank and wealth and when they spent their winters in town he, like everyone else, seemed to shrink before her eyes. Now he is aged and vaguely ill and she bursts into tears at the thought of her wasted life.

A STORY WITHOUT A TITLE


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s a chill. At night she and her husband argue, she is suddenly in great pain and her child is stillborn. Time seems to have slowed to a standstill and under the influence of chloroform Olga feels a dull indifference to life.

A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN AND OTHER STORIES-------------------------------------A NERVOUS BREAKDOWNVassilyev is a law student, a cautious and highly-wrought man obsessed with purity, sin and suffering. Taken on an evening tour of the local brothels by two chums, he loses his reason as he realises that the evils of prostitution and the plight of the fallen women are treated as commonplace by everyone but him. It emerges that he has had similar breakdowns before and his friends take him to a doctor who asks him a long series of questions, tests his reflexes and gives him bromide and morphia. He begins to feel easier.

THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVILLate at night, in a dozy state, a cobbler finishing a pair of shoes for an awkward customer resents his poverty and the jeers and insults he suffers. He takes the shoes to the customer and when he helps to put them on discovers that the customer has hooves and is the devil. Slily he praises the devil and bargains withhim to become a rich man at the cost of his soul. But life as a rich man turns out to be uncomfortably constrained by manners and conventions and still leads ultimately to the grave. The cobbler wakes up, realises he has been dreaming and thinks there is nothing in life for which one would sell one's soul to the devil.

THE BETIn an argument about the morality of capital punishment a banker bets a young lawyer 2 million roubles that he could not survive solitary confinement. For 15 years the lawyer lives in a sealed building serviced with books, wine, tobacco etc. The banker loses his fortune and, unable to pay the bet without bankrupting himself, steals into the sealed building to kill the lawyer. He finds the lawyer asleep, much aged and sitting over a letter which states that 15 years of reading great literature have made him contemptuous of what the outside world considers freedom. He renounces the 2 million. The next morning the lawyer leaves the building hourse before the 15 years are up. The banker retrieves the letter and puts it in a fireproof safe.

THE PRINCESSThe princess arrives for a visit at the monastery, very pleased with her own graciousness and the sense this place gives her of her own modesty and good thoughts. She then encounters a doctor who harangues her for her vanity, her stupid acts of loveless charity and her cruel treatment of everyone. She is startled to tears but is soon thinking how sweet it is to be misunderstood by everybody but God. The next morning the doctor apologises for his outburst and, thinking how blissful it is to forgive an enemy, she is conscious of a great happiness.

A DREARY STORYAn ageing professor of medical science diagnoses that he has only 6 months to live. He is a name, respected by everyone, and proud of his power as a lecturer. But his life with his wife and daughter is tedious and predictable, plagued by in

somnia and money troubles, enlivened only by his visits with Katya, whose guardian he was, a trusting child who later became an actress before losing faith in the theatre, burying an illegitimate child and attempting suicide. Katya plays hostess to the Professor and to one of his colleagues, a clever cynical philologist. When the Professor goes to Kharkov to confirm his suspicion that his daughter's suitor (whom she has secretly married) is a fraud, Katya appears at his hotel desperate for his advice on whether to run away with the philologist. By now the Professor has realised that his celebrity is hollow, that in three months' time the newspapers who laud him will be recording his death and that he lacks anygeneral idea of life. Katya begs him, as a clever man and a teacher, to advise h


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er, but he has nothing to say and realises that her fate is to have discovered her lack of any general idea even earlier in life than he has. She walks away without looking back.

THE HORSE-STEALERSCaught in a snowstorm the hospital assistant Yergunov rides his borrowed horse to an inn of ill repute and shelters there with a pair of notorious thieves and the innkeeper's daughter. He simultaneously flaunts his social superiority and tries to act the lad, telling tall tales and earning the others' contempt. One ofthe peasants dances furiously with the girl and taunts her by threatening to murder her and steal her money. She helps him steal Yergunov's horse and belongings. Yergunov alternately kisses and beats her and leaves on foot. In the privacy of his own thoughts he envies the peasant's wild outlaw life and formidable personality. Eighteen months later, sacked from the hospital, Yergunov has become a petty thief.

GUSEV AND OTHER STORIES-----------------------GUSEVThe sick-bay of a ship returning from the Far East. Gusev is a discharged soldier and a peasant, a man of simple impulsive pleasures who dreams feverishly of snow and home. Pavel Ivanitch is a priest and a compulsive protestor against any injustice. Without much fuss they die. We see Gusev's body sinking into the ocean among the fish and the sky above him is a tender colour which human speech can

hardly name.PEASANT WIVESA merchant and a little lad stop to spend the night at the house of Dyudya, an innkeeper and petty businessman who lives with his two daughters-in-law. The merchant tells how he came to adopt the lad: he had an affair with the boy's motherwho, to his annoyance, fell in love with him before poisoning her husband and dying in jail. Out of pity the merchant adopted the boy. It turns out that one ofDyudya's daughters-in-law is having an affair with the local priest's son and she suggests to the other that they poison her husband and their father-in-law. The morning breaks bleak, noisy and dirty. The lad can't find his cap and is scared of being beaten.

THE DUELLaevsky is an idle pleasure-seeker, employed in the government service in a godforsaken spot in the Caucasus to which he has brought his lover Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. His circle includes the bluff army doctor Samoylenko and the Darwinian zoologist Von Koren who believes that weak-willed men like Laevsky corrupt society and should be exterminated. Laevsky is sick of living in this outpost and despises his lover who, in her turn, secretly has affairs with the chief of police andthe local shopkeeper's son. In an attempt to escape to Petersburg Laevsky triesto borrow money from Samoylenko but ends up abusing him and, in a sideswipe, insulting Von Koren who challenges him to a duel. On the eve of the duel the jealous shopkeeper's son arranges for Laevsky to catch his lover in bed with the chief of police. The duel goes ahead but a deacon who is friend and foil to Von Koren shouts out in dismay and Von Koren misses his shot. Chastened by his experience

s Laevsky settles down to a life of toil with his lover whom he now marries while Von Koren sets off in dangerous seas on a zoological mission to the Far East.

THE GRASSHOPPEROlga Ivanovna, a flighty woman who lives among a group of artistic celebrities and has modest talents of her own, marries Dymov, the young doctor who has attended her father. She shows him off in a patronising way to her artistic friends and sets up home with a few fashionable gestures and not much money. While he works she travels about with her friends and on a Volga steamer starts an affair with Ryabovsky. But they get bored with each other, she dreams prosaically of home


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and returns to her husband who, soon suspecting her infidelity, becomes melancholy and withdrawn. The affair drifts on but she is demanding and selfish and only sours Ryabovsky's good humour. Dymov wants to forgive her but she is unable toshare his joy at a professional success and becomes increasingly jealous of thephilandering Ryabovsky. Dymov contracts diphtheria at the hospital, apparently on purpose, and only as he dies does Olga realise that he was a great man of science and an extraordinary and rare person.

AFTER THE THEATREAfter seeing a performance of Eugene Onegin with her mother, Nadya immediately sits down in her bedroom and writes a letter like that of the heroine in the play: 'I love you, but you do not love me...' She imagines writing the letter to one of the two suitors who love her and whom she does not love. Unrequited love isso much more fascinating than when two people are equally in love, and Nadya feels sorry for herself, shedding quivering tears even as great joy fills her overthe role she is playing. She begins to laugh and in order to justify her laughter thinks of a funny story of a poodle and a crow. Not knowing what to do with her immense joy she looks at the icon and twice murmurs Oh Lord God.

IN EXILETwo men exiled to Siberia - an old Russian and a young Tatar - sit by the fire at night on the riverbank where they operate the ferry service. The Tatar has been wrongly convicted, misses his wife and mother but believes that they will come and join him. The old Russian argues that it's better to reconcile yourself to

having nothing. He tells the story of a disgraced squire who lives across the river and whose hopes have been repeatedly set too high: he wanted to raise cropsbut the land is barren; he was briefly joined by his wife but she deserted him;his daughter became a solace to him but has now fallen ill. Out of the dark thesquire summons the ferry to fetch a doctor for his daughter. The old Russian mocks the squire but the Tatar turns on him, crying that the squire is good and alive and that the old Russian is bad and dead. Later the Tatar can be heard weeping and the old Russian chuckles and says that he'll get used to it.

NEIGHBOURS AND OTHER STORIES----------------------------NEIGHBOURSPyotr Mihalitch's sister Zina has absconded to live with Vlassitch, a married ne

ighbour, leaving her family in despair. In a rage Pyotr goes to have it out with Vlassitch but is too weak and indecisive to speak his mind and ends up listening passively to Vlassitch's trite thoughts about free love and other liberal questions of the day. Vlassitch, who is regarded as a free-thinker but brings no originality or moving power to his supposedly independent views, tells how he married his wife as a noble gesture after a fellow officer of his regiment had abandoned her.Zina enters and there is conversation about past inhabitants of Vlassitch's house, cruel forceful men who have committed brutal acts. Pyotr is unable to reprimand his sister and ends by telling her that she has done well. Riding home, along the bank of a pond, he thinks about his life and concludes that he has never said or acted upon what he really thought, and that other people have repaid him in the same way.

WARD NO. 6Ward No 6 is the lunatic ward of the local hospital, occupied by the paranoid philosopher Ivan Dmitritch and a few others. Andrey Yefimitch, the doctor, has long become disillusioned by his futile professional battle with sickness and death. In conversations with his friend the postmaster Mihail Averyanitch and then with the paranoid philosopher he argues that death and suffering are the inescapable human condition and that there is no afterlife (cf the non-resistance to evil in Excellent People). Ivan Dmitritch mocks his arguments, dismissing them as typically Russian laziness, fakirism and stupefaction, but the doctor is so stimul


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ated by the lunatic's conversation that the hospital staff believe he is losinghis sanity. The postmaster persuades him to join him on a trip to Moscow, Petersburg and Warsaw for the sake of his health but the doctor finds his friend's tedious and voluble company insufferable. When the postmaster loses his money gambling the doctor lends him 500 roubles and they return home. The doctor's assistant has taken over the hospital and he and the postmaster provoke the doctor to an outburst which results in his being confined as a patient in Ward No 6. He is beaten by the hospital guard and dies the next day of an apoplectic stroke. As he dies he realises that he doesn't want immortality and after a fleeting vision of a running deer he passes into oblivion forever. Only his housemaid and the postmaster attend the funeral.

TERRORDmitri Petrovitch is a farmer and a former Petersburg official who conceives anexcessive friendship for the narrator, a man who doesn't want to listen to his confidences and who finds Dmitri's wife very attractive though he is not in lovewith her. Dogged by a strange drunk called Forty Martyrs, whom both have previously employed and sacked, Dmitri and the narrator sit in a churchyard discussingthe unknown. Dmitri finds ordinary life terrifying and inexplicable. "My whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people." Heconfides that his wife doesn't love him and he doesn't understand why she married him. That night the narrator makes love to Dmitri's wife but she wants a great serious passion while the narrator wants only a flash of lightning. As she is leaving the room Dmitri stumbles on them. He again says that he understands nothi

ng and leaves with the incoherent Forty Martyrs. Infected by Dmitri's terror, the narrator too understands nothing. He leaves and never sees the couple again, though he understands they are still living together.

AN ANONYMOUS STORYThe narrator, a sickly revolutionary, takes a job as footman to Orlov, son of aGovernment figure on whom the narrator wishes to spy. Orlov and his circle are world-weary cynics and when Zinaida Fyodorovna abandons her husband for him Orlov's world is thrown into distasteful chaos. Observing the humiliations to which she is subjected, the narrator despises Orlov, feels Zinaida Fyodorovna's anguish and, unnoticed, loses his revolutionary convictions. When Orlov's father pays a visit the narrator recognises the opportunity to assassinate him but can no longer bring himself to do it. At last the lies and evasions of the Orlov set becom

e unbearable. The narrator, having written Orlov a letter exposing himself and accusing Orlov of being afraid of life, confronts Zinaida Fyodorovna with the truth of Orlov's deceptions. She is pregnant. He helps her escape and they travel to Venice. He has an attack of pleurisy but convalescing in Venice he revels in life. He tells Zinaida Fyodorovna of his adventures as a revolutionary and a seaman and she concludes that he belongs to a special class of men. He conceals from her the waning of his convictions and later, in Nice, she accuses him of dragging her away from Petersburg on a falsehood. She gives birth to a girl, poisons herself and dies. The narrator takes on the care of the child but his health is failing and he goes to Orlov to arrange for her future custody. Orlov is amused by the memory of the narrator's letter, admits the charge of cowardice but admonishes the narrator for his irrationality in caring about such things instead of taking an objective and historical view of life. The child is to be fixed up with

a schoolkeeper and sits unblinking as though she knew her fate was being decided.

THE TWO VOLODYASSofya Lyovna rides home intoxicated from a party, accompanied by her husband Vladimir, who is middle-aged, her friend Vladimir (they are the two Volodyas) and her friend Rita. She convinces herself that she loves her husband and has not married him, as everyone says, 'par dpit'. At a nunnery on the way home she stops to greet her friend Olga and takes her for a brief ride in the snow. The frivolousness of this act, and the solemnity of the nunnery, bring her to her senses and


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she knows that she doesn't love her husband. The question of whether God existsor not and the inevitability of death frighten her. The next day young Vladimircalls and, thinking of Olga, she asks whether burying oneself alive is the onlysolution to the problem of life. He despises her for putting on such airs and she knows it, but he puts his arm round her and they have a brief fling before hethrows her over. She consoles herself with regular visits to Olga who wearies of her, telling her mechanically that all will pass and God will forgive her.

THE BLACK MONK AND OTHER STORIES--------------------------------THE BLACK MONKKovrin, a philosopher at the university, is suffering from nervous exhaustion. He recuperates on the estate of his former guardian Pesotsky, who has barbered his trees into bizarre shapes, as if in mockery of Nature. Kovrin marries Tanya, the daughter of the house, and becomes a university professor, all the while feeling that he has betrayed his genius by keeping healthy and leading a normal life. This obsession is strengthened by hallucinations when he comes to imagine himself being visited by the Black Monk of the title. This visionary figure comes gliding over the grounds and tells Kovrin that he is ill because his genius puts him above the common herd and is incompatible with mortal love and that he will soon die. Kovrin is in a state of nervous breakdown, and on the monk s final visithe falls to the ground spitting blood: his frail human body could no longer serve as the mortal garb of genius. He dies with a blissful smile upon his face.

A WOMAN'S KINGDOMIt is Christmas. Anna, of poor origin, has inherited her uncle's factory. With only her aunt and no men to assist her in running the business of 2000 employeesshe feels out of her depth and frequently outwitted. Having made 1500 roubles in a lawsuit she looks for an appropriate employee to receive charity but ends bybeing disgusted by the clerk whose begging letter she acts on. Only the clerk'slodger, an intelligent man who mends watches for a hobby, appeals to her. The barrister and councillor who call for dinner are boors and the barrister cheats her financially. She longs deperately to have a husband and can't bear the idea that her life will continue unchanged till she dies. Why not marry the watch mender, someone jokes. It is what she has been thinking so she agrees, but everyone laughs and it comes to her that the idea is vain and senseless. There is no one w

ho would be suitable for her in her equivocal station. She and her maid, who also nurses a hopeless love, weep together.

ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLEYakov is a coffin maker who resents every missed opportunity to make money out of death. He is asked to play fiddle in the local Jewish orchestra but loathes Rothschild the flautist and comes to hate Jews. His wife becomes fatally ill and,as he makes her coffin, she asks him if he remembers how they used to take their baby to the willows by the river. Asked to play in the orchestra again he attacks Rothschild but then, by the river, he remembers what his wife said and thinks how everything has declined since they used to bring the baby here. He plays amournful song which Rothschild overhears and on his deathbed leaves his fiddle to Rothschild who often plays the mournful song to great applause.

THE STUDENTA theology student, returning home on a cold Easter night, stops to warm himself by a bonfire. He relates to the two widows standing by the fire the story of Peter's betrayal of Christ. One of the widows weeps, demonstrating by her sympathy, it seems to him, that "the past is linked to the present by an unbroken chainof events". The thought makes life seem wonderful and endows it with sublime meaning.

THE TEACHER OF LITERATURE


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A riding party, including Nikitin the young schoolteacher and Masha whom he loves, spend a day enjoying the fine weather and scenery. Over dinner Varya, Masha's older sister, is tiresomely pedantic, a guest admonishes Nikitin for never having read Lessing, and the family dogs are a constant irritant. But because he isin love everything at the house pleases Nikitin. The next day he returns and proposes to Masha who accepts him. His diary records the start of a blissful married life, but one night a chance remark at a gambling table reminds him that he has done nothing to earn this happiness. He begins to yearn to do something worthy and to be annoyed by the stupidity all around him. His tedious companion the geography teacher dies and pedantic Varya weeps because no one will marry her. Spring begins as exquisitely as last year but he sees himself surrounded by vulgarity and longs to escape.

AT A COUNTRY HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES------------------------------------AT A COUNTRY HOUSERashevitch is a middle-aged windbag whom people avoid. Meier the new deputy examining magistrate is a rare exception, but Rashevitch inadvertently insults him by railing against people of low birth without realising that Meier's own familywere of simple working stock. Rashevitch had hoped that his daughter Genya might find a husband in Meier. Genya and her sister hate their father for having scared off a desirable suitor. After an agonising night Rashevitch writes a letter of apology to Genya, knowing that he is only doing it out of malice and affectati

on. From the next room he hears Genya calling him a toad.THE HEAD-GARDENER'S STORYAt a flower sale on Count N.'s estate, the head gardener tells the story of Thomson, a doctor who was such a good man that no one could conceive of wishing himharm. Even the bandits wouldn't rob him. One day Thomson was found dead in a ravine. It looked like murder but everone decided he must have died in an accidentbecause no one would be evil enough to kill him. Later, a vagrant was caught trying to sell Thomson's snuffbox. The police found the doctor's bloody shirt under his bed. The vagrant was put on trial but at the last minute the judge acquitted him because he could not admit the thought that a man exists who would dare to murder the doctor.

THREE YEARSAlexei Laptev, son of a wealthy Moscow merchant, falls in love with the daughter of the doctor who is caring for his sister. She accepts his marriage proposal out of duty and a desire to exchange her dull provincial life for the attractions of Moscow, but he knows that she does not love - is repelled by - him. Once married, they both suffer. The warehouse of the family business is a place of slavery and misery where Alexei was regularly beaten by his hated father. Their social circle is mediocre and the round of concerts and art exhibitions gives no pleasure. Alexei's sister dies, as does the daughter the couple soon produce. Alexei s brother Fyodor goes mad and his father is blind. Forced to get to grips with the family business, Alexei overcomes the clerks' obstructions and is charmed by his success. But he is tempted to run away rather than turn into a dull sour businessman. The next day he calls on his wife at her country dacha. She has softene

d and tells him that she loves him but he feels as if he has been married ten years and he wants his lunch. What does the future hold for them? He concludes that time will tell.

THE HELPMATENikolay knows his wife is unfaithful. He gets the maid to help him look for a telegram and finds one on her table, in English, which praises his wife's little foot. She comes home complaining that her bag with 15 roubles has been stolen. Nikolay is irritated and eventually tells her he will give her 25 roubles if she will only shut up. He feels old and likely to die soon, and after a scene with he


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r he offers her a divorce and tells her she is free. She tells him he is just trying to get rid of her and angrily refuses the divorce. He spends the night wondering how he ever fell in with his predatory wife and her predatory mother. In the morning the maid brings a message that the wife is waiting for her 25 roubles.

WHITEBROWA famished she-wolf tries to catch a lamb from a smallholding but only gets a small puppy which becomes attached to her and follows her back to her lair. She is hungry enough to consider eating it but the smell offends her. The next night it follows her back to the smallholding and its bark alerts the keeper, a comic figure who often marches about reciting inane phrases. He fires a gun into the darkness and tells his overnight guest that the hole in the sheepcote roof must have been made by his dog Whitebrow who is stupid. I do detest fools, he says.

ANNA ON THE NECKYoung Anna is obliged to marry tedious middle-aged official Modest Alexeitch when her father's drinking threatens to ruin the family. She is scared of her husband who gives her no money and is pompous and inflexible. However, her late mother, who had been a governess, taught Anna the tricks of social success, female beauty and flirtation. At a charity ball she uses these tricks to such effect that a string of men begin to call on her. Her husband is abashed by her success and she calls him a blockhead. When her family see her driving about town in style, her father makes to shout at her but his sons hush him.

MURDERMatvey used to be employed at the tile works, where he was a chorister and a religious obsessive, until his health failed him. Now he lives in a state of mutual loathing with his cousin Yakov, who runs an inn, and with Yakov's daughter andsister Aglaya. Having been an extreme ascetic, with a reputation (he claims) for healing the sick and a sideline in fornication, he was admonished by his boss for religious pride and now deprecates excessive Christian zeal. Yazov follows the strict letter of the Church ritual, not in the hope of being blessed but for form's sake and because man cannot live without faith. One day Matvey insists ontaking oil with his potatoes during Lent and an argument ensues in which Yakov and Aglaya bludgeon him to death. Their crime is soon discovered and they are sent to the penal colony on Sakhalin. Yakov is one of a crew despatched to load coa

l onto a passing steamer. Now, surrounded by the sufferings of many races, he has begun to pray again and sees the savagery and ignorance of his native district for what it is, even while he longs to return there and save just one man fromruin so that, for just one day, he might be free of suffering.

ARIADNEOn a steamer trip the author is accosted by Shamohin, a handsome man who opinesthat Russians are all idealists, which is why women always disappoint them. He tells the story of his own relationship with Ariadne, beautiful sister of a penniless estate owner, whom he describes as fascinating, cold, sensualist, cunning and ruthless, a liar, in love with her own body and full of vain prattle about her non-existent artistic talents. In youth he fell in love with her but she found him too prudent and cautious and went off to Italy with Lubkov, a dashing marri

ed man with no money. Shamohin tried to deceive himself that the two were not lovers and financed their affair by loans to Lubkov. Then, when Lubkov disappeared, Ariadne and Shamohin started an affair but it has left him deep in debt. He concludes that through the emancipation movement women are regressing to their primitive condition, dedicated only to vanquishing men, and will drag culture downwith them. The author tells him not to generalise. At Yalta the two men encounter each other again and Shamohin is elated because Ariadne may be about to leavehim for a Prince.


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THE LITTLE TRILOGY & OTHER STORIES (1896-98)--------------------------------------------AN ARTIST'S STORYThe narrator is a landscape artist idling on the estate of his friend Belokurov. Nearby is the home of the Volchaninovs, a mother and two daughters. The older daughter, Lydia, is a teacher and social activist. The narrator criticises her, arguing that the medical centers and schools she supports are, under present conditions, just another means to enslave the peasantry. Lydia replies, "It's true we are not saving humanity, and perhaps we make a great many mistakes; but we doall we can, and--we're right." The narrator falls in love with the younger daughter but she feels obliged to tell Lydia who arranges for her to be sent away. The narrator never sees them again, although he imagines that the younger daughter is thinking of him somewhere.

MY LIFEMisail renounces the "privilege of capital and education", with its bribery andcorruption, to live by his hands as a railway worker and a painter. Most of hisset repudiate him but a shallow idealistic woman admires and marries him. They live together but the local peasantry steal from them and undermine the woman's efforts to build them a school. She becomes disgusted and leaves. Meanwhile Misail's sister gets pregnant and is fatally ill. He reports her plight to his alienated father who blames him for setting a bad example. After her death Misail visits her grave with her daughter.

PEASANTSA Moscow waiter and his family are forced to move back to his peasant home whenhe becomes ill. The story juxtaposes the bestiality of peasant life with the Christian piety of peasant belief. The man dies, his wife and daughter start back to Moscow, and Russia rolls on forever. 'And now she felt sorry for all these people, painfully so, and as she walked on she kept looking back at the huts.'

THE PETCHENYEGA retired Cossack officer, now a farmer, befriends a man on a train and inviteshim homw for the night. The man is a vegetarian and the farmer thinks how good it would be to have a principle like that to guide him through life. His own conversation is about the stupidity and dulness of his wife and children, and incidents of casual violence and depravity that he has witnessed. The visitor holds hi

s tongue until the last moment when he can't help bursting out "You have bored me to death!" The farmer is overcome with confusion, sits meditating on the intellectual tendencies of the day and finally takes a nap.

AT HOMEA young woman returns to her estate on the steppes following the death of her father. At first the steppes fill her with ideas of freedom and tranquillity. But social life is dull and there is an undercurrent of abuse of the peasantry. The girl's aunt dismisses a worker the girl has befriended because he is illegitimate. The girl is outraged but tells herself there is nothing she can do. In her frustration she in turn lashes out verbally at one of the house staff. Realisingthat she is going to pieces she decides to get a grip on herself by marrying a doctor she doesn't like and pledging herself to good works she considers futile.

THE SCHOOLMISTRESS [IN THE CART]A schoolmistress is riding home in a horse and cart. She has been working, without pleasure or vocation, for so long that she has forgotten her early life in Moscow. On her way home she meets a handsome but fading and ineffectual landownerand thinks how different life would be for both of them if they were married. The roads are muddy and treacherous. She thinks of the corruption, incompetence and backbiting that surround her at the school. Her cart driver takes her througha ford where she is soaked and the provisions she has brought from town get wet. In front of her is a railway station at which she sees a woman who reminds her


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of her own mother. Suddenly Moscow comes back to her in great detail and she cries with happiness at the thought that her life as a schoolmistress has just been a bad dream. Then she is summoned back to the cart and the vision vanishes.

THE MAN IN A CASEBurkin (the schoolmaster) tells Ivan Ivanovitch (the vet) about a recently deceased Greek master, Byelikov, who was so cautious and scared of life that he seemed to live in a protective case of galoshes, umbrella, flannel vests, dark spectacles. Byelikov hated any transgression of any rules and terrorised his colleagues by inflicting his fussy ways on them. Then a hearty Little Russian woman and her brother arrived in town and Byelikov fell in love with her. The brother, on the other hand, despised Byelikov. A quarrel arose between them when Byelikov saw the woman and her brother out bicycling. The brother threw Byelikov down the stairs and the woman laughed at him. Byelikov took to his bed, died and was laid out in his final protective case, a coffin. A coda follows in which Burkin and Ivan Ivanovitch reflect on the story: the latter says that we all spend our livesamong trivial, fussy people talking nonsense and that this too is like being sealed in a case that none of us can escape.

GOOSEBERRIESBurkin and Ivan Ivanovitch, caught in a rain storm, shelter at Alehin's house. For weeks Alehin has been too busy to think even of washing himself. Ivan Ivanovitch swims in the millpond and is blissfully happy. Then he recalls how he and his brother were happy as small children before they moved to the city. His brothe

r set his heart on buying a farm, returning to the country and growing gooseberries. To achieve his dream he married a rich woman he didn't love who soon died.Last year Ivan Ivanovitch visited him and found him putting on the airs of a great landowner and flattering himself on the quality of his gooseberries which were in fact sour. Ivan Ivanovitch reflects on the nature of happiness, observing that it always depends on others' silent unhappiness and that the real object oflife is not to be happy but to do good. The story pleases no one but Alehin considers that he has been told something interesting that has no bearing on his hard-working life. They go to bed but Burkin can't sleep.

ABOUT LOVEAlehin observes that his lovely maid Pelagea is in love with the drunken lout he employs as a cook. Love is a great mystery, he says, before relating the great

love of his own life, which came after he had taken on his infertile farm and dedicated himself to slaving over it. He fell in with the vice-president of the circuit court, whom he liked for his good nature despite finding him a shallow-minded mediocrity. Alehin fell in love with the man's wife but didn't declare himself for fear that his "gentle, sad love" would lead to the ruin of her life, and"she apparently reasoned in the same way". Their relationship became irritable and unhappy. At last when she and her husband had to move away Alehin could not stop himself from kissing her passionately on the train. His listeners are sorrythat such a kind clever man should be reduced to endless labouring on his farm.

IONITCHA physician in a provincial town falls in love with the daughter of a family ofmiddlebrow socialites. As a tease she asks him to meet her in the cemetery at ni

ght but doesn't show up. Finally, she rejects his suit coldly, saying that she must go to Moscow and study at the conservatory. Four years later, the doctor has grown corpulent and built a big practice. The girl returns, knowing that she has no musical talent, and tries to rekindle their affair, but he becomes irritated and says to himself, "What a jolly good thing I didn't marry her!"

A DOCTOR'S VISIT & OTHER STORIES (1898-1904)--------------------------------------------A DOCTOR'S VISIT


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uicide and the gulf between this life of official duty in the backwoods and hisdream of entering Moscow society as a proven professional. The doctor returns to take the magistrate to stay with the rich acquaintance. He passes a pleasant evening but is troubled by thought of whether humans are organically linked or just bits of life, accidental fragments. The following morning the Constable arrives and asks them to do their duty by conducting the inquest. Without a word theyleave to do so.

AT CHRISTMAS TIMEAn illiterate peasant woman hires a local man to write a letter to her daughter, who married and moved to Petersburg four years earlier. The scribe fills the letter with nonsense. In the second part of the story, the letter has arrived at the health farm where the son-in-law works. He brings the letter to his wife, who bursts into tears and cries out, "Queen of Heaven, Holy Mother and Defender, take us away from here!" Her husband recalls that several times she had given himletters to send to her parents, but he never bothered to do it. In the end the wife stops crying, "very much frightened of him--oh, how frightened of him!"

IN THE RAVINEThe village of Ukleevo, located in a ravine, is contaminated by pollutants fromits three calico factories and inhabited by discontented peasants. Grigory, whoruns the grocery store, seems to favour his younger son's hard-working wife Aksinya. His wife, Varvara is charitable and good. His elder son Anisim visits unexpectedly and they decide to marry him off to young, beautiful but simple Lipa. La

ter, Anisim is jailed for counterfeiting and Grigory, who has unknowingly paid his workers with the forged coins, loses his standing in the community. Lipa gives birth to a baby son, Nikifor. When Grigory leaves his property to his grandson, Aksinya, in a fit of rage towards Lipa, pours boiling water on Nikifor, who dies in hospital. Three years later, Aksinya has become powerful, with her own business. Grigory is left without money and has lost faith in life. Lipa leaves the Tsybukin home and moves to be with her mother. They see Grigory on the street and give him food, crossing themselves as they walk away.

THE BISHOPThe Bishop is unwell but goes through the motions of his office. His mother visits with a young niece. Like everyone else she is constrained and formal in his company. Nobody speaks to him genuinely, simply, as to another human being except

the old servant Sisoy who is a tedious old man. The little niece cries and tells him that the family is very poor and needs money. He promises to talk at Easter and give help, but his illness worsens, he has typhus and as he gets thinner and weaker he tells himself it is good to be turning so insignificant. His mother too forgets now that he is a bishop and kisses him as though he were a child. On the day before Easter Sunday he dies. A month later a successor is appointed and nobody thinks anymore of the dead bishop.

BETROTHEDA young woman living on her grandmother's estate, with a great desire for education and independence, is engaged to a vacuous and unmotivated man. Sasha, an ill and impoverished young man who is spending the summer on the estate persuades her to run away with him to Petersburg and attend the University. After the schoo

l term, she returns for the summer, but things will never be the same, the family receives word that Sasha has died of tuberculosis, and she packs to leave theestate "as she supposed forever."

MISERYHUSH!EXCELLENT PEOPLEAN INCIDENT


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CHAMPAGNETHE LOTTERY TICKETTHE EXAMINING MAGISTRATEHAPPINESSBAD WEATHERA PLAY

IN TROUBLETHE KISSKASHTANKAA LADY'S STORYA STORY WITHOUT A TITLESLEEPYTHE STEPPELIGHTSTHE BEAUTIESTHE PARTY

A NERVOUS BREAKDOWNTHE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVILTHE BETTHE PRINCESSA DREARY STORYTHE HORSE-STEALERS

GUSEVPEASANT WIVESTHE DUELTHE WIFE

THE GRASSHOPPERAFTER THE THEATREIN EXILENEIGHBOURSWARD NO. 6TERRORAN ANONYMOUS STORYTHE TWO VOLODYAS

THE BLACK MONKA WOMAN'S KINGDOM

ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLETHE STUDENTTHE TEACHER OF LITERATUREAT A COUNTRY HOUSETHE HEAD-GARDENER'S STORYTHREE YEARSTHE HELPMATEWHITEBROWANNA ON THE NECKMURDER

ARIADNEAN ARTIST'S STORYMY LIFEPEASANTSTHE PETCHENYEGAT HOMETHE SCHOOLMISTRESS [IN THE CART]THE MAN IN A CASEGOOSEBERRIES


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ABOUT LOVE

IONITCHA DOCTOR'S VISITA VISIT TO FRIENDSTHE DARLINGTHE NEW VILLATHE LADY WITH THE DOGON OFFICIAL DUTYAT CHRISTMAS TIMEIN THE RAVINETHE BISHOP

BETROTHED

the stories of chekhov: summaries

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