Love and Ambiguity in Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog"

Introduction: A Love Affair Without Easy Answers

Anton Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Dog" is a portrait of a love affair that is intended to be brief, but whose reverberations change both participants' lives. In Gurov, the male protagonist, Chekhov has created a character who is at once pitiable, despicable, and relatable. He is relatable mainly because one often feels both pitiable and despicable when it comes to love; it just depends on whether you are the one who is lovesick or the one in control — the one doing the hurting. The central purpose of the story is to ask more questions than it answers. It leaves the reader wondering where the story will go after its end: Will the main characters continue their affair, or is it doomed to fail?

Chekhov plays with his audience by challenging them to make moral judgments about the characters and then, a mere paragraph later, introducing information that makes them question that same judgment. He plays this game through literary technique: every moment of the story is imbued with ambiguity. Like love, nothing in the story's world is black and white.

Gurov and Anna: Trapped in Loveless Marriages

Nearly everyone, at one point or another, has gone through a period of dissatisfaction with their choices in life. The feeling can be suffocating, and one will seek an escape wherever it can be found. The two main characters in the story are no exception: Gurov and Anna both have problems in their respective marriages.

Gurov is a relentless womanizer, married to a woman he does not respect. Early in the story, he remarks that his wife is "unintelligent, narrow, inelegant." This gives the reader the immediate impression that there is something fundamentally flawed about their relationship, yet nowhere in the story is there a depiction of them at home together where their dysfunction could be observed. All the reader knows of Gurov's wife is what he himself shares. This creates two competing feelings: either (a) Gurov's wife is truly a difficult woman to be married to, or (b) Gurov's perception of her is a convenient excuse to avoid the guilt of adultery. Interestingly, the one line of dialogue his wife is given — "The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri" — pokes fun at Gurov and slightly endears the reader to her. So from the outset, the reader is not sure whether Gurov is merely a victim of a loveless marriage or an unfeeling cad.

Gurov's womanizing leads him to Anna, the "lady" of the title. She too is frustrated with her life, though her dissatisfaction stems from her inability to understand or connect with her husband, compounded by the general restlessness of youth. Her feelings about her husband are made clear when, after her first encounter with Gurov, she says, "My husband may be a good, honest man, but he is a flunkey!" She does not respect her husband — specifically his occupation — but she appears far more remorseful about her nascent relationship with Gurov than he is about his part in it. She continually calls herself common and low, telling Gurov, "I love a pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don't know what I am doing."

From a moral standpoint, it is comforting to the reader that Anna does not approach the affair as callously as Gurov, who views cheating on his wife as "a light and charming adventure." While both characters are doing something wrong, Anna seems to be the innocent party, and the reader gets the impression that Gurov is taking advantage of her naivety. Anna goes on to explain what drew her to Yalta: "I was twenty when I was married to him. I have been tormented by curiosity; I wanted something better." This statement alone makes Anna the more sympathetic character. Youth can lead a person toward decisions they later regret, even seemingly sensible ones like marriage. Anna seems trapped in an impossible position: she must give up her life for love or remain stuck in a marriage with a person to whom she feels no connection.

Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. "The Lady with the Dog." Ibiblio. Web. 4 Apr. 2011. <