1. Anton Chekhov

2. Anton Chekhov-A Brief Biography Anton Chekhov is regarded as the father of modern short story. He was born in Taganrog, a small port of the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. His father had been born a serf, but his grandfather had saved enough money eventually to buy his family’s freedom. Chekhov’s childhood was unhappy, pouring vodka to customers in his father’s store and studying schoolbooks under the strict eyes of his father who believed religiously in education and corporal punishment. He attended medical school and began to write his first stories when he was a medical student at Moscow University, to help his family pay off debts. His early works were mainly humorous stories published in newspapers under different pen names, but the popularity made him decide to become a writer. With the publication and popularity of two collections of short stories in 1886 and 1887, Chekhov was able to give more and more time to writing. He bought a small estate near Moscow, where he lived with his family and treated peasants at no charge. He died of tuberculosis at age 44. Chekov was extremely modest about his extraordinary ability to empathize with the characters he created. His style appears simple, yet rendered with pathos. His stories excise immense influence on many writers of short fiction.

3. Brief Introduction to the Story This story is about the extramarital love affair between Gurov and Anna. They happen to know each other at Yalta and later secretly meet in Moscow. This story is lacking in dramatic plot, yet the complex emotions and feelings are rendered with pathos.

4. Question 1 What is the setting at the beginning of the story? What are Gurov and Anna doing there?

5. Answer 1 The story happens at Yalta, a seaside resort for wealthy Russians. Gurov and Anna are both tourists.

6. Question 2 What kind of a person is Gurov’s wife? How does he feel about her?

7. Answer 2 His wife is tall, erect, self-important, who considers herself intellectual. Gurov, however, secretly thinks she is stupid and narraw-minded. He is afraid of her and stays away from her.

8. Question 3 How does Gurov think and feel about women in general? In which manners would his love affairs with decent women begin and end?

9. Answer 3 Though dismissing women as “the lower race”, he cannot live without them. He feels more comfortable and free with women than with men. Every time he meets an interesting woman he would forget his past experience — how the initial intimacy between the two never fails to plunge him into a complicated and unbearable situation. His love affair always begins with eagerness and amusement, and ends in bitterness and disgust.

10. Question 4 What does Gurov think of Anna when alone in his hotel room?

11. Answer 4 He thinks of her having been a school girl recently, doing lessons like his won daughter; he thinks of her diffidence and angularity in the laugh and manner in talking with a stranger; he thinks of her “slender, delicate neck”, and “lovely grey eyes”. He thinks that there is something “pathetic” about Anna.

12. Question 5 How is Anna different from other women that Gurov has been involved with? How does he react to her “confession” after they have had sex?

13. Answer 5 The other women either love cheerfully, or without genuine feelings, or in a greedy manner. Gurov always ends up hating them and feeling disgusted. Anna feels truly sorry about this love affair. Her confession as a sinner actually bores Gurov.

14. Question 6 What feelings and thoughts are evoked by the scenery?

15. Answer 6 The monotonous and hollow sound of the sea from below is indifferent to time, to life and death. Because of this, it speaks of peace, eternal salvation, advancement of life, progress towards perfection. Gurov feels that life is always beautiful as long as we do not forget human dignity and higher aims of existence.

16. Question 7 What are Gurov’s feelings upon parting from Anna in Yalta? Why does he feel he has deceived her?

17. Answer 7 He is sad and moved. His adventure comes to its end, leaving him nothing but memory. At the same time, he feels remorseful about unintentionally deceiving Anna. When with her, he is not his true self, he pretends to be superior, and treats her with the arrogant or ironic air of the old.

18. Question 8 What is the nature of Gurov’s life back in Moscow, as well as of his thoughts and memories of Anna?

19. Answer 8 He gets back to the routine social life of Moscow, thinking that he will very soon forget Yalta and Anna. But he cannot forget her at all; the memory of her becomes more and more vivid and intense. Songs, wind, piano and many things would remind him of her, and she seems to follow him everywhere and watches him.

20. Question 9 Why is that a mere comment on sturgeon makes Gurov so indignant?

21. Answer 9 He has a strong desire to talk about Anna, and his confused emotions. Yet he has nobody to talk to, and does not know what to say. Finally he cannot resist, and tries to confide in a casual friend, who, seems deaf to the mention of a fascinating woman, and is all the time thinking about food. Gurov is angry because the Moscow people around him live a life of gambling, drinking, eating, and meaningless talking; and he is one of them. Without higher goals or ideals, he feels clipped, wingless, and imprisoned.

22. Question 10 What are Gurov’s emotions at the sight of Anna in the theater in S —?

23. Answer 10 He feels that Anna — little and undistinguished, lost in a provincial crowd — is so dear and precious to him, is his whole world, his sorrow and joy.

24. Question 11 How is Anna’s inner struggle depicted?

25. Answer 11 She is both frightened and excited by his appearance. She admits that she is unhappy without him and says they have lost their senses in loving each other.

26. Question 12 How does Gurov feel about his “two lives”?

27. Answer 12 His open life is exactly like everybody else’s. It is appearances, conventions and routines. His secret life is of great interest and essence to him, in which he is sincere, real and true, without deceit and falsehood. He feels that every man may have a secret and more interesting existence hidden beneath the public life.

28. Question 13 How does Gurov feel when he sees his gray hair in the mirror? What’s the love between Gurov and Anna like?

29. Answer 13 Seeing the gray hair in the mirror, he feels sympathy for Anna, warm and young now, will also grow old like him. It is amazing that Anna loves him so much and he, after many love affairs, falls in love for the first time when his hair turns gray. Their love is tender and close, like that of couples and friends, but at the same time hopeless in front of reality. As it is said, they are like two birds forced to live in separate cages.

30. Question 14 Do you like the ending of the story? Explain why or why not.

31. Answer 14 The ending of the story is full of pathos, and it is very sad and touching. Though nothing big and important happens in the end, nor is it happy ending, the reader would reflect upon the love relation between Gurov and Anna, and their suffering, and struggle.

32. General question 1 Gurov may be interpreted as an aging seducer entering the twilight of his womanizing years, or he could also be understood as a man searching for love and is ultimately redeemed by it. Which view would you endorse?

33. Answer 1 Although Gurov lightly enters into an adulterous love affair with Anna that soon turns painful and complicated, it would be misleading to say that the main theme of ''The Lady with the Dog'' is one of moral corruption or sin. In fact, it is through this adulterous affair that Gurov discovers his humanity and even his moral center. Gurov has always taken women for granted and has treated them without compassion or respect. During the course of his affair with Anna, however, he becomes more and more concerned about the truth of love and life. Yet a few words on Chekov will shed more light on our interpretation of the story: Unlike Chekhov's contemporaries — most notably Tolstoy and Dostoevsky — who were preoccupied with sweeping historical, philosophical, and religious themes, Chekhov was interested in the smallest moments of human interest. While Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were driven by profound moral convictions, Chekhov was noted for his cool objectivity. He was reluctant to moralize, for him, it was less important to moralize over a horse thief or an adulterer than it was to understand them. In ‘‘The Lady with the Dog’’, Chekhov neither romanticizes nor condemns the illicit love affair between Gurov and Anna. He simply presents it, but with such clarity and perception that the reader recognizes the profundity of what the characters experience and is entirely persuaded by their reality.

34. General question 2 The story ends on a typical note of ambiguity, as Gurov recognizes that he is living two lives, one open and one secret; and the only way the couple can resolve their fears is to acknowledge that they are at the beginning of a "new and splendid life", which they will not openly enjoy for a long time to come. What do you think of the ending?

35. Answer 2 The love between Anna and Gurov is a dilemma considering the social background of Russia in the 19th century, when infidelity is a serious issue. Their relationship has to be kept secretly. In the end of the story, their problem remains unsolved. This ambiguous ending renders the story more poetically poignant, for the pain and suffering which are inevitably involved in this love. It might suggest that the love is able to momentarily help them transcend the reality, while at the same time reminds them of the reality. Reverly Hahn reads the ending in this way, “desperation is not the dominant note of the story, nor its outcome really tragic, because the hardship of Anna’s and Gurov’s love cannot be separated from the fact of that love and from the fact that it brings each a degree of fulfillment not known before.”

36. A Website of Anton Chekhov http://www.online- literature.com/anton_chekhov/