The Lady With The Dog

The story’s narrative structure shows the moral and emotional growth of Chekhov’s protagonists, and its development suggests points of criticism of marriage and patriarchy. Gurov and Anna’s relationship is bookended with hotel room scenes. This narrative framing emphasizes the contrast between the characters’ earlier deception, lack of self-knowledge, and emotional detachment, and their greater authenticity, self-awareness, and affection at the end of the story. The sameness of their clandestine hotel room meetings and their seemingly unchanged marriages and social stations highlight Anna and Gurov’s moral and emotional growth despite their external constraints.

The characters’ own sense of time and change, particularly of beginnings and endings throughout their relationship, lays the groundwork for Chekhov’s experimentation with narrative conventions. As different seasons in their relationship seem to end, those closures initiate beginnings that drive the narrative’s forward momentum. The story ends as Gurov and Anna think about their future and recognize the difficulty of the journey before them. As the story ends at the threshold of another beginning, this frustrating uncertainty and open-endedness seem to pull readers into the characters’ frustration and uncertainty about their future.

Unlike many prose works of Chekhov’s older contemporaries, such as Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) and fellow Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878), “The Lady with the Dog” story does not end with a tragic denouement. Chekhov also avoids concluding predictably with a marriage or elopement. Breaking with the prevalent genre conventions and avoiding an improbably neat resolution, Chekhov provocatively concludes with the start of an unknown future that is bleak, possibly hopeful, yet ultimately inconclusive.

The story’s tracing of time is one of the main engines of the narrative’s progress. The changing seasons punctuate the beginning and apparent ending of Anna and Gurov’s time in Yalta. The passage of time and its apparent meaningless waste also underscore Gurov’s life in Moscow. Finally, the urgency of passing time darkly colors the later phase of Gurov and Anna’s relationship and their uncertain future.

As an element of plot development, changing seasons also become a means of characterization. They often align with the developing relationship between Gurov and Anna, and they also mark each character’s individual growth.

Physical settings similarly map onto the story’s timeline and character development. The warmth and summertime at the Yalta resort correspond with the more carefree yet selfish and insincere early phase of the affair. The succeeding autumn and winter follow Gurov’s return to Moscow and his somber reevaluation of his unhappy and trivial life. Similarly, Gurov’s trip to the town of S—occurs during winter, when Anna and Gurov feel particularly constrained and lonely. The last stretch of their affair also unfolds in the dead of winter: The harsh Moscow winter contrasts with the perseverance of Anna and Gurov’s love, while the December cold mirrors their isolation and melancholy as they ponder their seemingly impossible future.

From early on, the story critically examines marriage as a social institution and reflects on its implications of social respectability and financial safety. At the level of characterization, Gurov and Anna’s respective marriages suggest a possible arrangement in each case, for convenience or practical considerations. Such arrangements were common in the Russia of Chekhov’s day. For Gurov, whose banking post does not match his arts degree or training as an opera singer, his wife’s connections and dowry may have provided entry into a steady and prestigious career with opportunities for social advancement. In Anna’s case, her Russian heritage may have given the German Von Diderits an important badge of Russian-ness in addition to his adherence to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Von Diderits’s markedly Russian marriage likely enabled his mobility up the bureaucratic ladder in Russia’s government service.

In their respective marriages, Gurov’s wife and Anna likely have gained a stable social footing on account of their husbands’ positions in society. Each woman also would have gained a source of income—vital for a life and future in a patriarchal world. In such a world, marriage is a main source of financial security for women, for whom there are few career options.

Thus, while the institution of marriage centers on men and their interests, it is supposed to benefit both spouses. Chekhov’s story, however, exposes the failure of this model of mutual happiness as it explores marriage in the context of the contemporaneous patriarchal society. In Gurov’s case, he and his wife become estranged early in their marriage. Gurov treats his wife with fear and contempt, and he considers all women lesser human beings. This sense of male superiority manifests not only in Gurov’s general attitude but also, ironically, in his repeated unfaithfulness to his wife with other women. Both Gurov and his wife remain dissatisfied, alienated, and dishonest in their union. However, in the patriarchal world of Chekhov’s day, Gurov remains free to pursue other women, thus degrading his marriage further even as his affairs leave him loveless and discontent.

Anna feels the constraints of marriage more keenly. She is confined to dependence on her unloved and, perhaps, unloving husband. While Gurov travels freely, Anna must invent an excuse to travel to Yalta. While Gurov goes out without his wife, Anna attends the theater performance with her husband, and she must continue to deceive her husband to protect her relationship with Gurov later in Moscow. Their affair distresses her, leaving her miserable. In loving Gurov, Anna suffers because she betrays her husband and fails to uphold her own sense of morality. This sense is undoubtedly shaped by Anna’s patriarchal world, and for a while, she alone feels the weight of this lapse of moral integrity.

The apparent amorality of Anna and Gurov’s relationship feeds into the larger paradox of how moral uprightness, love, and compassion may be restored through the violation of these principles. Throughout much of the story, Gurov and Anna embody the institutionalized marriage that prioritizes men, provides for their convenience, and covers up deception, mutual contempt, and estrangement. Chekhov aptly uses the metaphors of imprisonment and bird cages to describe these failed marriages (578, 584).

However, as they violate their marital vows, Chekhov’s protagonists paradoxically start to form a different kind of marriage. Their adultery grows into a loving relationship based on mutual respect, honesty, acceptance, and genuine care. In this sense, Chekov’s criticism of marriage is more nuanced than a straightforward repudiation of marriage or even a radical reinterpretation. Instead, the narrative presents a view of marriage that is more faithful to its sense and purpose, no matter how imperfectly it may be pursued and incompletely reached.