Love in Chekhov and Steinbeck

“The Chrysanthemums” and “The Lady with the Pet Dog”
Both Steinbeck and Chekhov offer realistic depictions of love and unhappiness in their respective stories. Chekhov paints a vivid picture of two unhappy people, each married to someone neither loves. They meet at a resort away from home and casually fall in love with one another. However, the reason they are able to fall in love so easily on this resort is that it is a vacation—it is not real life. It is not the day to day or the simple fact of the matter. They are on holiday: they feel free to be charming, to be witty, to laugh, to be themselves, and to not care about anything at all. Chekhov would say, perhaps, that they are not quite living in reality and that when they do attempt to carry on their love affair into reality, they quickly realize the difficulty: “it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning,” writes Chekhov. To the individual who says he loves his wife but feels as if there is nothing he can do to stop the heartache, Chekhov might replay: “That heartache does not every go away. It is a sign that you are alive. Do not seek to live a life without it—you will not find it. You are a sensitive soul; your heart aches because it feels. You can sense perhaps what others cannot—some unhappiness within yourself, some unhappiness out there, or some unhappiness in others. Remember, however, you must not dwell on that unhappiness for too long—for there is also happiness there in you, in others, and out there. There is beauty and wonder and mystery and all manner of goodness and truth. To remain in melancholy, absorbed in one’s own melancholy is to risk falling. Error is melancholy’s child, as Shakespeare says—consider that point and consider another, that Malick makes in his film To the Wonder: ‘You must love, whether you like it or not.’”
Steinbeck would most likely agree, as his story is full of illusion as well and describes a woman who is tricked by a man who feigns interest in what she is doing so that she might find him more agreeable and give him some work to do. He is like someone who has read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. She is naïve and clearly wanting someone to pay attention to her and someone to see beauty in what she sees beauty in—namely her flowers. When she sees the flowers she gave the man tossed on the side of the world, she feels crushed and old: “She turned up her coat collar so he could not see that she was crying weakly—like an old woman,” writes Steinbeck. What she is turning her collar up on is her feeling and the awareness that she nearly was tempted to touch the man who deceived her, to embrace him, and to give love to him. Now, realizing that the love was all an illusion, all in her mind, she recoils back within herself and is afraid to let the world or her husband see what has affected her. Steinbeck would probably say that this is the problem with people: they are afraid to expose themselves, to be themselves, to be open and honest. People hurt—life is not easy. It is made all the more difficult when people do not learn to let go—to let go of the injuries or the grudges. When people hold things against others, it drags them down into a petty, narrow place where they can never be at peace. Yet there is no good reason to let oneself succumb to such a state. Life is beautiful and worth living: people need love, and every husband and every wife needs it especially. If they fight, they must learn to forgive. If they do not talk or communicate, they must learn somehow to do so. If they are annoyed by petty annoyances, they must learn to deal with it, to adjust or to fix it. Those who are married are in a sacred bond: they have promised to live together—and what is the fruit of that marriage? It should be children. Where are the children? Do you have any?—this is perhaps what Steinbeck would ask the man.
Both authors have sympathetic and empathetic takes on love. Chekhov’s look at the relationship between the two adulterers is highly understanding. He sees so clearly into their hearts and minds as though he were standing in their own shoes. He never condemns them either, even when he is illustrating their faults. He also does not give them a happy ending—because he cannot say what their ending is. His focus is on the aftermath of the affair—how it plays out—how the dream of freedom beckons to them both, though they both realize that they are not free, that they must engage in deception in order to be free, and that it is quite possible that they are even deceiving themselves, though Chekhov does not linger on this point. Instead, he merely leaves it open. The way before them is more difficult now because they are attempting to love in a manner that is at odds with their vows. They are attempting to love not their spouses but one another. They are attempting to make their adultery work in plain sight, though they know that their sins must remain hidden lest they be judged. They do not consider, however, what it means to be judged—not by men—but by God.
As Steinbeck shows, the judgments of men can be cruel and deceptive just like the passerby who seduces the wife into thinking that he cares about what she cares about. The flowers that he tosses are the symbol of the love that she gave him, the love that all people give to others who treat it carelessly. It is like the love and grace that God gives, the seed that is scattered: some of it finds fertile soil and plants its roots and grows. Other seed falls upon rock and withers and dies. Instead of looking for someone out there to make love with, one has to look inside to make love grow in oneself first. If one has no love to give within oneself first, it will be impossible to make love grow with others outside oneself.
Thus, both authors take a realistic view towards love: it is not easy and is not romantic. Rather it is an effort of the will. However, the mind can become blind to the realities of love, of the everydayness of love. It can become wrapped up in passion and self-interest. It can lose sight of what it means to make others happy, to show love to others, and to care for them without judging them or holding grudges towards them. Both authors would observe that the characters in their stories romanticize love even though they the authors do not. For instance, Elisa in Steinbeck’s story romanticizes the life on the road. She says, while watching the stranger hammer out the dents in the saucepans: “It must be nice," to live on the road—"It must be very nice. I wish women could do such things" (Steinbeck). The man responds, with a sense of experience and understanding of the reality—an understanding that she does not possess: "It ain't the right kind of a life for a woman.” She does not like this answer and protests and he backs down—but the reality is this: she does not know. She does not know the hardship of living on the road, of having to find shelter, of relieving oneself on the side of a road, of having no proper place to wash, of having no proper place to call one’s own, of having to hassle people for work the way he has done with her just to get by. She does not know this life, but he does. And when she romanticizes it because she is drawn by the “freedom” it represents, he assures her that it is no sort of life that a woman would ever really want.
The allure of freedom is the same thing that brings Chekhov’s characters together at the resort town. They are drawn by the idea that they are free for a few weeks and thus may do whatever they like—fall in love, have an affair—and then when it is time to go back to reality, that is fine. However, the dream of freedom follows them. They find themselves haunted by it back in reality. They want it. They have tasted the romantic side of love and they want to make it their reality. The problem is they are not free to do so. It is a sin, as Chekhov acknowledges in the beginning of the story. They are married to others and must love the spouses they already have. Their trouble is that they have fallen in love with a romantic version of love and want to make it their reality instead of turning their reality into a life of loving with the spouses they already have. Chekhov showed that such a life is possible in another short story entitled “The Darling”—here he simply leaves his characters stuck in their fantasy as they struggle to find a way to make the fantasy “work.”
For the man who is unhappy in his marriage though he loves his wife, the authors would say to find love in his life and to love the wife no matter how he feels. They would advise him thus: “Do not worry so much about how you feel. The feelings come and go. The heart can be deceived just like the mind. The feelings are not indicators that true love has been found. Nor are they indicators that you can never be happy. The heart is merely a gauge: it tells you where you are so that you can get back to where you need to be. You are married, so love your wife. Love her even if you do not know how. Women need love, perhaps even more than men. Men—they need respect. But if you show your wife love, you will get the respect you deserve, and you will begin to know what it means to be happy.” In this way, the two authors would help the man to solve his problems. Love, they would show, can often come like an illusion when in reality it is an effort of the will, though its source comes from a higher place above us all.

Works Cited
Carnegie, Dale. How to win friends & influence people. Musaicum Books, 2017.
Chekhov, Anton. “The Lady with the Pet Dog.”
http://www.shortstoryamerica.com/pdf_classics/chekhov_lady_withthe_pet_dog.pdf
Malick, Terrence, dir. To the Wonder. Magnolia Pictures, 2012.
Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/julius_caesar/full.html
Steinbeck, John. “The Chrysanthemums.”
http://mspachecogdhs.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/0/13206998/the_chrysanthemums_by_john_steinbeck.pdf