Chekhov\'s Cherry Orchard and Trauma

The Cherry Orchard Play By Anton. Chekhov
Ms. Ranyevskaya’s behavior in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is replete with sentimentality, distraction, and nostalgia. However, lurking beneath her obvious mistakes and foolish dreams is a serious trauma—i.e., the drowning death of her seven year old son and the loss of her husband—leaving her a motherless widow. It is the unexpected entrance of death into her life that could be used to explain or at least indicate the presence of psychological trauma in Ms. Ranyevskaya’s character. It is Anya who tells of these misfortunes: “Father died six years ago, and a month later our little brother, Grisha, drowned. Sweet boy, he was only seven. And Mama couldn’t face it, that’s why she went away, just went away and never looked back” (Chekhov 816). Thus, Ranyevskaya’s absence from the family estate the past half decade, her ill-pursued love affair, and her spendthrift ways are all indications of a reckless sort of behavior that is more akin to a soul trying to self-medicate away its problems by chasing after dreams, shadows, flights of fancy, and—then—when none of it works to fill the hole in the heart, returns to the past to take refuge in memories of a time when everything seemed whole and at peace. This is why the cherry trees of the estate represent so much to her—and why she refuses to do a deal with Lopakhin: he wants to eliminate the cherry orchard and install chalets for tourists. Cutting down the trees would be like cutting down Ms. Ranyevskaya’s hope that in nostalgia she can find the cure for her trauma. The reality is that she must face the facts: she cannot afford to keep the estate and the orchard will not bring back the dead.
Ms. Ranyevskaya’s inability to face reality and to cope with the past is evidenced in the way she cries upon returning to the family estate at the beginning of the play. Trofimov, the former tutor of how now dead son, identifies himself to Ranyevskaya and asks if she recognizes him—not having seen him in five years. She makes no response but only embraces him and cries. In her crying, however, she sobs for her lost child: “My Grisha…my little boy…Grisha…my son” (Chekhov 821). Varya attempts to console, but Ranyevskaya only weeps the more: “My little boy drowned, lost forever….Why? What for? My dear boy, why?” (Chekhov 821). Momentarily overcome with grief she forgets herself and the happy homecoming she envisioned is for a minute overshadowed by the loss she suffered. Though she does manage to shake off her emotional display of sorrow and proceed to inquire after Trofimov, the revelation has already occurred for the audience: Ranyevskaya is aching from a trauma that will not go away and that she has never addressed. The loss of her son was a blow that sent her tumbling and spiraling out of reality into a fantasy of dreams. And, now, having been spurned by her so-called lover in Paris, she returns home to enjoy the dreams of her youth. And upon arriving home, one of the very first reminders of the real world comes from her dead son’s tutor, who merely identifies himself and mentions the name—Grisha—her son—a name likely not mentioned in years in her presence. The floodgates open, the untreated trauma inside her is exposed. Then—just as quickly as it appears—it vanishes: Ranyevskaya gains control of herself, shuts the gates of her emotions, speaks briefly for a moment more and then departs for bed to be alone. Such is her homecoming after living in a whirlwind of denial in Paris for five years.
Ranyevskaya has come home to indulge in her nostalgia—identifying the old paths that she and her loved ones used to walk out on the property, picturing her mother taking to the land—and yet at the same time she has come home to grieve, whether she likes it or not. She cannot help but be reminded of her son by returning to her home and to all the people who are still there, right where she left them. They are reminders of the painful part of the past that she has tried to get away from and that she still tries to get away from. By clinging to the hope that her nostalgia can become a kind of dream come true—i.e., that she can keep the estate and the cherry orchard (which represents her Eden)—she seeks a way around the painful parts of the past. The cherry orchard is a diversion for her from reality.
Yet it is Lopakhin who represents reality—the firm hand of reality that will keep coming whether she likes it or not. He is sober, thoughtful, intelligent, and watchful. He opens the play, waiting for Ranyevskaya’s arrival, listening for the sound of their coming. He is annoyed by the pettiness of the others—particularly Semyon, who complains constantly. If Ranyevskaya fails to deal or traffic with the painful past, Semyon refuses to do anything but deal with the painful past: he is always finding something to complain about. Not so, Lopakhin. Lopakhin rose up from being the son of a serf to being a wealthy man—a man so wealthy that he will, in the end, buy the estate and commence in cutting down the orchard so as to make the estate profitable for tourism.
However, it is that exact sequence of events that allows Ms. Ranyevskaya to deal with the painful parts of her past and obtain closure. The end of the play shows that she is finally able to move on and come to terms with what reality is forcing her to leave behind: “Oh, my orchard, my beautiful orchard! My life, my youth, my happiness, goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!” Ms. Ranyevskaya states (Chekhov 850). In saying goodbye to the cherry orchard she is finally saying goodbye to the dead, in her own way. She has finally faced the trauma and accepted that what will be will be.
And yet there is a little bit of trauma that remains in her—that does not want to be treated even still. For in the very next breath—just before finally exiting the home for once and for all, she pauses and turns and states, as though still in disbelief, “These walls, these windows, for the last time…And Mama loved this room…” (Chekhov 850). To symbolize this little bit of leftover sentiment inside her, Firs enters the room and tries to follow the others out, only to find that he cannot get out. He is locked inside. He is like the locked trauma still hidden away inside Ms. Ranyevskaya. He is the little bit of untreated sentimentality that still remains—yet, he will not get out. He lies back, has a scolding word for the young, and then is left seemingly to die on stage with the house and its memories. He is the trauma finally left behind in a sense.
In conclusion, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard does present the behavior of Ms. Ranyevskaya in such a way that the reader might see them as indicators of psychological trauma. The fact that she is introduced as a motherless widower who lost both a husband and a son within a month of one another immediately prepares the audience to be on the lookout for trauma. The trauma is then displayed when immediately she returns to her home for the first time in 5 years and bursts into tears at the first mention of her son Grisha, whose name likely has not been heard in all that time. She shows the signs of a woman who has never quite come to terms with his death, and her desire to escape into the past—the pleasant past—the cherry orchard of her youth—indicates that she is trying to avoid the pains that she has suffered. That is why she has been in Paris all this time, trying to find a new love, spending her money unwisely. Now, even her last remaining support is being taken away: she ends the play having to face reality and accept the losses once and for all.
Works Cited
Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard: a Comedy in Four Acts. In Norton Anthology of World Literature, ed. by Martin Puchner. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.