Love has always been a controversial issue throughout centuries. However, it was, and is, still one of the most popular topics in literature.One cannot help but be reminded of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when that particular topic is brought up, which is one of the finest examples on this topic. Despite all the literary works written about love, love itself remains unexplained. The questions “why” and “when” is often asked –it can usually be answered vaguely or deeply, but sometimes it remians unanswered. In Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen makes Mr Darcy, who has captured young girls’ hearts for decades, say “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”, which is both very informative and a vague answer, when asked by his love of life. It is vague, because it doesn’t exactly answer the question “when”. On the other hand, it is a perfect answer to describe the mysterious nature of love. Similar to the nature of love, some stories also don’t have a beginning or end. Anton Chekov has been acknowledged to be the master of this kind of stories. People sometimes describe those stories as “a slice of life”. The Lady with the Lap Dog, for that matter, is an example to both unexplained love and these kind of stories. We don’t know exatly what marks the beginning and end of both the story and the characters’ love. However, we can still speculate on the quesitons “when” and “why” by exploring several theories. In order to understand the nature of Gurov and Anna’s “love”, the question of “Who seduced who?” needs to be answered. When looked at the story step by step, the answer would be Gurov, since he w... ... middle of paper ... ...emselves. Works Cited Chekhov, Anton. “The Lady with the Dog” The Lady With the Dog and Other Stories. Macmillan, 1917. Rpt. in Custom Course Materials: ELIT 217. Ed. Peter Paul Stephan. Bilkent University, 2013. 82. Print. Chekhov’s Lady With the Pet Dog. 16 November 2010. Web. 17 November 2013. < http://may-on-the-short-story.blogspot.com/2010/11/chekhovs-lady-with-pet-dog.html/ >. Creasman, Boyd. "Gurov's Flights Of Emotion In Chekov's `The Lady With The.." Studies In Short Fiction 27.2 (1990): 257. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 6 Nov. 2013. Fulford, Robert.“Surprised by love: Chekhov and ‘The Lady with the Dog’.” Queen’s Quarterly. n.d. Web. 17 November 2013. Greenberg, Yael. "The Presentation Of The Unconscious In Chekhov's Lady With Lapdog." Modern Language Review 86.1 (1991): 126-130. Humanities International Complete. Web. 6 Nov. 2013.
Anton Chekhov wrote a short story in 1899, entitled "The Lady with the Pet Dog. " It is about a love affair seen from the eyes of the man named Gurov. The story occurs in nineteenth-century Russia, in a town called Yalta. Joyce Carol Oates, in 1972, did a wonderful job of rewriting the story, changing the protagonist from the man to the woman. Her version also changes the setting to Nantucket Island in twentieth-century America.
With the idea of a love that is forbidden it is looked down upon and can cause problems for the people who have fallen for its’ hidden desires. In the short story “Drown” by Junot Diaz, the main character Yunior is conflicted with his sexual preferences due to how his community would react to him being a homosexual. In the short story the “The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov the main character Gurov finds love with a younger woman while still being married, despite the idea of even being with another woman at that time was strictly forbidden. Whereas Gurov and Yunior are different as Gurov handles a relationship due to having multiple affairs, while Yunior is confused about his relationship with his friend because of his homosexuality,
In the short story, The Lady With The Little Dog, we are introduced to Anna and Gurov, a couple intertwined in a romantic issue. Their love for each other brings them together, but their respected families and lives prohibits them from expressing their love freely. Even with a period of separation, both Anna and Gurov realize that their own lives bring them unhappiness. For example, when Gurov finds Anna house he sees, “a long grey fence with inverted nails hammered into the tops of palings”. He sees and understands how she is metaphorically imprisoned in a house that promotes unhappiness. To add the level of difficulty to their issue, getting a divorce was out of reach because while it was possible, only in a few and rare circumstances were divorces granted during the period of time of the story. Even with all of these obstacles, they arranged to meet up in Moscow showing their love will take them to such lengths, to hold on to the happiness they find in each other.
Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Bishop” was written in 1902 and published in 1979 in “Anton Chekhov’s Short Stories” along with many of his other works, such as “The Betrothed” and “The Lady with the Dog”. While “The Bishop” is not a direct reflection of Chekhov’s life, the story does reflect elements of his life. His religious upbringing is most prevalent in this story, but being ill with Tuberculosis of the lungs during the time this story was written is shown as well through Bishop Pyotr’s sickness.
“Gurov felt bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the naive tone [and] remorse”(The Lady with the dog, 294). Gurov is a selfish man who cares for no one but himself, he puts his needs, feelings and desires before anybody else. In the story The Lady with the Dog a man named Gurov is constantly cheating on his wife and one day, he meets a women named Anna and his feelings for her go far beyond any feelings he has ever felt.
Tolstoy's unique elaboration on the subject gives us a new option. The eccentric Pozdnychev presents the whole in a dark setting. Once again, these protests come from an observation of society, not from an understanding of love as a concept. What Pozdnychev strives for is a change of hearts, the bettering of his fellow men. Love should be exalted, and poetic, and sensual, but it is not. If it is not, it is because society and state have made it such, by legalizing prostitution, by encouraging young men to debauchery.
The moment when Dmitri Gurov meets Anna Sergeyevna, little did they both know, their lives would change forever. Their journey to each is told in the short story " The Lady with A Dog” by Anton Chekhov. Dmitri has never been in love but that changes when he meets Anna. Together they a create a secret forbidden love that they cant break away from. The author tells their story of unforeseen love through the main characters, themes, and symbols.
“The Lady With The Dog” contains many themes that can seen as reality and fairytale type situations. Some of the themes were seen as unreal by the main character Gurov. Gurov thought the vacation in Yalta to be unreal but, thought that the city life in Moscow and weather affected how he related to Anna and helped him find meaning in his own life. The main themes within “The Lady With The Dog” are love. Love is the one of the main themes in the short story.
As Smirnov barges in demanding payment from Mrs. Popov, readers learn he despises women because of past experiences. “There was a time when I played the fool . . . I ran through half my fortune as a result of my tender feelings” (Chekhov 5). Chasing his feeling of love, Smirnov falls short many times, never finding deep affection. The idea of love has led him to believe that gifts and experiences will lead to happiness.
This is a discussion of love and it’s intrinsic challenges, a theme espied in the 16th century; ‘The course of true love never does run smooth’. Playwright William Shakespeare foregrounded this in his play Romeo and Juliet, telling the story of two doomed and ill-fated “star crossed” lovers, born to feuding houses in medieval Verona. With love’s obstacles being a key theme, the play’s relevancy remains as potent as ever,
Released in 1983, Eldar Ryazanov’s A Cruel Romance remains the most compelling adaptation of Alexander Ostrovsky’s nineteenth century play about a beautiful but poor young woman desperately seeking love in an inherently selfish world. As in Without a Dowry (1879), the film centers on the dramatic conflicts between not only Larisa Ogudalov and her various suitors but also amongst the aspiring men themselves. Through its representation of Ostrovsky’s themes, Ryazanov’s production depicts the ramifications of humanity’s obsession with money, leading to misery, jealously and even death. When viewed through the prism of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s approach of dramatic performance, A Cruel Romance is largely effective in conveying the pivotal tensions of Ostrovsky’s original play, particularly in relation Larisa and Paratov. Furthermore, Ryazanov enhances Karandyshov’s role in the film in comparison to the nineteenth century text, emphasizing both the pathetic nature of his character and his justifiable desire for retribution against his tormentors. Given the limitations of the film genre however, Robinson’s role is substantially diminished in A Cruel Romance, as the production team foregoes the opportunity to further antagonize Larisa’s suitors in order to focus on the central love triangle. Though Ryazanov does not take full advantage of Ostrovsky’s exploration of the exploitative nature of all of the male characters, he is effective in developing the central romantic tensions of Without a Dowry in his 1983 film production.
“The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov, is a story about love and admiration. Dmitri loved Anna because she seemed to be so much like himself for they are both in unhappy loveless marriages. I
"The Bear," which is a classic one-act play written 1900, is one of the great works of Anton Chekhov, which is very much about a widowed woman. The Bear can be regarded as a comedy since it is to give the audience entertainment and amusement. This comedy reveals the fine line between anger and passion. The theme is about a strange beginning of love between Mrs. Popov and Smirnov. It demonstrated that love changes all things it touches. Dialogue of the characters, the action of the characters, and the characters themselves shape the theme. Unbelievable actions and change in mood on the part of the characters show that love can sometimes come from an odd turn of events.
In Conclusion, this story portrays a woman who is insecure, lonely, and looking to love and to be loved. This love is something which Olenka searches for in males, both adults, and boys, she thinks she finds this love, in her husbands and, lover. She what she thinks to be love, in her first husband, and then her second, but the third male in her life, her lover, known as Voldichka is there only for his satisfaction. Olenka does get the fulfillment of love needed y Voldichka. Olenka than tries through a boy named Sasha, Voldichka’s son. It is true to this reader that even though Olenka experienced these relationships with these men and the boy, Sasha, she still never found a complete fulfillment in life. Olenka did not experience respect as a woman, but someone who would be there as needed. Olenka never earned respect as most women do, she to this reader only was a filler for others, others of the gender known as male.
Matlaw, Ralph E. Anton Chekhov¡¦s Short Stories: Texts of the Stories Bachgrounds Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1979.