Lady With the Dog - RJ #2

The Lady With the Dog, like its stormy compatriot Anna Karenina, touches upon themes of adultery and the appropriate emotions associated with it. Exactly how these emotions, and characters, are treated is the point of interest here, and will be my focus in this journal.
             The central plot driver of Lady With the Dog is the romance between Gurov and Anna. Before examining their relationship, however, a more detailed character study is in order. Anna Sergeyevna remains a rather static character throughout the story (from beginning to end she is portrayed as sentimental, with her passion for Gurov persisting up to the end), and the color gray is often mentioned in her description (her eyes, favorite dress) which further drives this impression of drabness. We know she is lonely from the start, implied by the fact that she has a dog, and this point is reiterated several times by Anna herself, but other than this dimension, she is rather flat and uninteresting. What is interesting about her is, ironically, that she is not described as being exceptional in any way; she is pretty and young, but nothing about her is particularly striking—she does not show much emotional strength, she is not quirky or alluring in personality, nor does she even have a particularly beautiful appearance. The most remarkable thing about Anna is that she, out of all the women Gurov seduced, was the only one who succeeded in keeping his heart, and by the way the story is written, the reader is led to conclude that this was through no virtue of her own but rather a coincidence.
Gurov, on the other hand, is given a clearly defined character from the start, and undergoes an evolution as the story progresses. He begins as an avid philanderer and bon vivant, who views women as lowly due to his own unhappy marriage, and generally has little consideration for the women he romances. His demeanor is described as being charming, which certainly helps his chances with the ladies. His first meeting with Anna does not change him very much outwardly, as he is seen to be irritated by her sentimental outbursts; it is only after they part that he feels a tremble in his soul, like the ripples that follow a stone dropped in water. His blossoming love for Anna changes him, turns him into a lovesick man, to the point where he no longer finds joy in the trivial things in life and even finds himself angered by them. One can say that he has lost in his own game. The two of them, although very different, face the same obstacle: the forbiddance of their love and the various entanglements they must sort out (such as their respective spouses, the moral weight of their actions, etc.).
Their relationship, therefore, is defined by a sense of desperation and frustration, and such emotions are laid clearly out in the open for the reader to see. Yet, the reader feels little passion or sympathy on their part. In fact, the entire story is seen as if from a behind a glass—there is little pathos and flowery language, and everything is painted in straightforward, almost stark brushstrokes that were not meant to evoke much emotional involvement but merely aim to describe. I have mentioned my profound distaste for men like Gurov very vocally in class already, but that is merely my pre-established point of view in play, and was not intended by the author. Chekhov does not seem to agree, or, rather, shows no indication of his opinion whatsoever; in his typical realist style, he leaves us to reach our own conclusions about Gurov and Anna, or, rather, encourages us to not reach conclusions at all and merely see the situation as it is.
There can be several reasons for this. Firstly, one might say that the autobiographical nature of the story might make Chekhov reluctant to lead the reader to any strong opinion. Chekhov’s marriage was also quite unhappy, not unlike Gurov’s relationship with his wife, which might explain why Chekhov himself was a bit of an adulterer. By painting Gurov not as an infidel swine but as a normal man with his reasons for behaving the way he does, the author might have wanted to justify himself to the world. This could also explain why Gurov was more developed than his lover was—the author could identify with him more. A more likely explanation, however, is that Chekhov only wanted to take a snapshot of a scene in the human mind, much like how he captured Ivan’s emotions in The Student. If Ivan’s evolution in the story was from bleakness to hope, the Gurov’s is just the opposite; he begins as a happy man and degenerates into a man miserable in love, albeit with some optimism that he will be able to sort things out. The entire point of Chekhov’s realism is that these emotions, no matter how passionate or despairing, are seen as just another subject to be studied or painted, unlike Romanticism in which they are celebrated and seen as possibly the most important part of the human condition. No exception is made for Gurov and Anna’s relationship, which is more of a case study than anything else. It drives the plot, keeps things interesting, but most importantly it is a complex scenario which the author found convenient to explore (after all, it is hard to escape the adage “write what you know”). Although we cannot know for sure if this almost-flippant realism was intentional, it seems quite clear that Chekhov at least did not intend to insert a moral, or a definite conclusion in his story. The reader is free to take away from the story what she sees.
So if Anna Karenina focuses on the stormy feelings that rage in the titular character’s heart, this Anna is portrayed as a subject in a static painting, and her lover, quite similarly as well. One could choose to love them, or hate them, as I did. Chekhov himself certainly didn’t.