Psychological Trauma in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

Introduction: Trauma Beneath the Sentimentality

Madame 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: the drowning death of her seven-year-old son and the loss of her husband, leaving her a bereaved widow. It is the unexpected entrance of death into her life that explains — or at least indicates — the presence of psychological trauma in her 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 over the past half decade, her ill-pursued love affair, and her spendthrift ways are all indications of a reckless kind of behavior more akin to a soul trying to self-medicate away its problems — chasing after dreams, shadows, and flights of fancy — and then, when none of it works to fill the hole in the heart, returning 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 accept Lopakhin's deal: he wants to eliminate the cherry orchard and install chalets for tourists. Cutting down the trees would be like cutting down 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.

Returning Home: The Floodgates of Grief

Ranyevskaya's inability to face reality and 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 her now dead son, identifies himself to Ranyevskaya and asks if she recognizes him, not having seen her in five years. She makes no direct response but only embraces him and weeps. In her crying, however, she sobs for her lost child: "My Grisha…my little boy…Grisha…my son" (Chekhov 821). Varya attempts to console her, 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 briefly 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 truly addressed. The loss of her son was a blow that sent her tumbling out of reality into a fantasy of dreams. Now, having been spurned by her lover in Paris, she returns home to enjoy the dreams of her youth.

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 — a name likely not spoken in her presence in years. The floodgates open and the untreated psychological 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.

The Cherry Orchard as Refuge from Reality

Ranyevskaya has come home to indulge in her nostalgia — identifying the old paths that she and her loved ones used to walk, picturing her mother moving through 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 escape and continues trying to escape.

By clinging to the hope that her nostalgia can become a kind of dream come true — 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 from reality. Chekhov's use of the orchard as a symbol of nostalgic longing captures how Ranyevskaya has displaced her grief onto the landscape itself, making the trees stand in for everything she has lost and cannot mourn directly.

Conclusion: Trauma Left Behind

Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard presents the behavior of Madame Ranyevskaya in such a way that the reader might see it as an indicator of psychological trauma. The fact that she is introduced as a widow who lost both a husband and a son within a month of one another immediately prepares the audience to watch for signs of trauma. That trauma is then displayed when, upon returning to her home for the first time in five years, she bursts into tears at the first mention of her son Grisha — a name likely not heard in her presence 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 — into the pleasant past, the cherry orchard of her youth — indicates that she is trying to avoid the pain she has suffered. That is why she spent those years in Paris, trying to find new love and spending her money unwisely. Now, even her last remaining refuge is being taken away. She ends the play having to face reality and accept her losses once and for all — carrying forward, as Firs's fate suggests, only those fragments of grief that the human heart cannot quite release.

Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard: A Comedy in Four Acts. In Norton Anthology of World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.