The Lady With The Dog By Anton Chekhov Analysis

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Recommended: Details of Russian society during the time of Chekhov

Views of Russian Society through Anton Chekhov
Growing up in poverty stricken Russia, Anton Chekhov was forced provide for his family at an early age by writing short stories for various Russian periodicals while simultaneously attending medical school. Although his life was rather stressful at times, Chekhov still enjoyed visiting with family and friends both in Russia and abroad. He obtained a life long habit of having numerous affairs until he settled down in Yalta and married his wife Olga. It is said in a biography that his travels and personal experiences inspired many of his later stories such as "The Darling" and "The Lady with the Dog" (Silet 3). In these stories full of love and despair, Chekhov demonstrates a similar theme of emptiness in marriage, the struggles of Russian women in society, and the writing style of realism.
A common theme in these two stories is the feeling of emptiness or being incomplete without another person to feed off of. In "The Darling," Olga Plemyannikov struggles to find her own identity without a man in her life to love. In fact, "She was always loving somebody. She couldn 't get on without loving somebody" (Chekhov 2). Every time she falls in love she adopts the opinions and lifestyle of …show more content…

In "The Lady with the Dog", Dmitri Gurov is an unhappy married man who looks for excitement in his life by having many affairs. To demonstrate, "...when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was silent" (Chekhov 1). He considered women to be "the lower race" and only saw them as entertainment. It gives the impression that Dmitri is not satisfied without womanizing and uses it to feed his shallow ego. It isn 't until his affair with Anna that he begins to "regard his present life as nonsensical, empty and dull" (Connolly

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