World Literature#2/ The Lady and the Dog/ Morality of Love

The Morality of Love

           Two points constitute the significance that short story “Lady and the Dog” bears. Sergeyeyna’s husband is not directly described as a villain, and the story is written from the perspective of the two adulteresses.

          Of course, this is not the first story in human history that deals with the theme of adultery. The Bible has stories of adultery, whether mistaken or unintentional. Shakespeare deals with adultery in his plays and poems. However, there are significant differences that set this story apart from any other of these stories. Chekhov’s characters are serious; they live in real world where adultery is considered as a sin a crime, while Shakespeare’s characters in comedies live in fantasy world where one or two day’s bed switch was considered as the most humorous thing at that time. Also, the characters adulterate in intention; they do not mistakenly sleep together as Noah or Shakespearean characters would do in deceivable situations. Most importantly, the husband of Sergeyeyna is not vilified although the protagonists are willing to justify and enjoy their espionage.

          The discussion on Chekhov’s realism had been rampaging here and there, but what seems to be more important is the significance of the realism, not whether the story is a realistic one or not. The characters in Chekhov’s “The Lady and the Dog” are not gods and goddesses in Greek Myth. They do not have superhuman powers or classical atmosphere that makes adultery somehow justified and accepted as Zeus would. Instead, the affair goes on in a very real place—Yalta—where we can find the city on a map. The description is real: the dog eats the bone, the grass is mowed, and the adulterers’ wife and husband are real. It is as if they are people who could be existent any minute during the late 19^th century.

            Nonetheless, there is less hostility towards the couple to be found in this story. This couple intentionally engages into immorality, yet they enjoy the umbrella held by Chekhov to protect themselves from moral criticism. Not only are those, the couple’s counterparts, the faithful wife and husband not depicted as villains. Of course, the protagonists had some dissatisfaction with their spouses. However, the level of dissatisfaction is very low: calling her husband a “flunkey” is not much of a slander, while characterizing one’s wife as “boring” is something universal. They are not villains. The “flunkey” husband even lets his wife freely travel to Yalta and to Moscow whenever she wants to.

             Then what is the significance of these characterizations done by Chekhov? Why are the characters depicted as engaging in an intentional and unreasonable adultery? Do they have a reason to do so?

The striking significance is that there is no such grand reason, there is no such justification. Things we call “immorality” can be an unfair denomination of what are just consequences of random emotions. In the past, loving one another than the wife was considered a sin. There had to be a justification that either the spouses were evil or it was unintentional. However, as restrictions go loose, there is no such need. What, should love be restricted in the upcoming 20^th century? 

World Literature #1/ The Student/ Night after the Crucifixion

Night after the Crucifixion

It has been agreed that Anton Chekhov’s The Student is a realist short story, depicting the everyday life of Russians. I think differently. The constant Biblical allusions dictate that the subtext beneath the seemingly realist story endows much meaning to the story. In order to trace the clues that Chekhov laid for the readers to follow, one should notice the straightforwardly spoken generalization in the conclusion of the story.

Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: since she had shed tears all that had happened to Peter the night before the Crucifixion must have some relation to her. . . .

He looked round. The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness and no figures could be seen near it now. The student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present -- to both women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people. The old woman had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being was interested in what was passing in Peter's soul.

The excerpt above gives two useful guides in interpreting this short story. (1) It explicitly suggests that the story of Vasilisa and her daughter bears a relationship with the Twelve Gospels (referred to as “which had happened nineteen centuries ago” in the excerpt above). (2) The concept of past and present had played an important role in the story. Therefore, in this essay, I will show (1) how related the two stories are and (2) what the timeline linked from past and present foreshadows future events.

The description of timeline in the story is something to note. The narrator, Ivan Velikopolky, conjectures that during “the days of Rurik” and “in the time of Ivan the Terrible and Peter,” there would have been “same desperate poverty and hunger” as it is right now. He compares such status to the atmosphere with “cold penetrating wind” and “needles of ice.” However, he states that in a closer past (“[a]t first”), “the weather was fine and still,” there even was a “gay, resounding note in the spring air.” To sum up, “same darkness, the same feeling of oppression” has been existent for a very long time, but with a small aberration in the distant past.

Another notion to take in regard is that the time setting in the story is Good Friday, when “nothing has[d] been cooked.” Good Friday is a Christian holiday that commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus. In memoir of his sacrifice, Christians fast during the day Christ had been in pain. For a long time, the Jews had been under foreign oppression until Jesus has come to enlighten them and lessen their burdens. However, on Good Friday, he was caught by Roman and dissident rabies and later crucified. The atmosphere changing from the super pastàdistant pastà present in the story pretty much matches with the Bible.

But of course, this coinciding change of atmosphere is not sufficient enough to show a link between the short story and the biblical tale. Nonetheless, the concatenation of events and their settings in The Student are identical with that in the Gospels.

The characteristics of Vasilisa and her daughter Lukerya links to the tale of Peter and Jesus. When Jesus was dragged off by the Jewish dissidents, Peter warmed himself by the fire after having slept. Similarly, Vasilisa stands by “the fire” and has spent time “with the gentry” and could express “herself in refinement” while Lukerya was “beaten by her husband” as a village peasant. The expression that Lukerya was “beaten” is noteworthy. Chekhov uses the same word (“beat”) when describing the ordeal Jesus had to go through, hence “beat Him” and “…He was beaten.” Also, it is suggestive that Vasilisa and Lukerya had “just had supper” by the time Velikopolsky arrives to the campfire. When he tells the tale that Peter wept bitterly after the crow crowed, Vasilisa starts making “big tears” flow “freely down her cheeks.”

By now, it is reasonable to assume that Lukerya is being compared to Jesus while Vasilisa to Peter. However, there is one doubt that lingers in the story; Velikopolsky describes Lukerya as “a little pock-marked woman with a stupid-looking face.” Not only that, Peter, though finding meaning of life, does not “feel as though Easter would be the day after to-morrow.” It is absurd that Peter is joyful when the widows are either weeping or in “enduring intense pain.” The sudden lesson at the end of the story hints that there might be a deviation from the original ending in the Gospel, resurrection.