Before the nineteenth century the role of women was almost the same in the society :  a woman , who had to maintain  a household and to reproduce.  A Woman was dependent on a man in everything. We can see this inequality between a man and a woman throughout the whole history. However, in the middle  of   the nineteenth century the characterization of women started  to change, and the  world first women’s right convention was held  in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848.Women were fighting for  getting equal rights in the society as men did have. So, the role of women was not stable in the nineteenth century, it was in a period of slow changes. This situation in the society was portrayed in the world literature as well. I would like to consider the characterization of women and attitude toward women in the poem of John Keats “ La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and  in the work of Anton Chekhov “ The Lady with the Dog”. Both  main characters( a narrator of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and Gurov from “ The Lady with the Dog”) of these works fell in love  with a woman, but  they had  different understanding of  love and perception of  women.

      “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” was about a knight ,who got seduced and fell in love with a mysterious woman, who left him in the end. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” was translated as “The Beautiful Lady without Pity”. The Lady was so beautiful and bright , she made him charmed by her appearance.(“Full beautiful ,a faery child, Her hair was long, her foot was light and her eyes were wild”). This quote described her as something faery and pure, because he compared her with a child, and I feel this lady was so clean and light, but on the other hand the author’s words “her eyes were wild”  gave me a strange feeling and  a completely different perception of the woman, it’s like she was not so innocent ,so pure anymore. I see that the narrator was in deep love with her and he was so romantic(“ I made a garland for her head, and bracelets too, and fragrant zone…”).He was caring and loving, he set the lady on his horse and as he said  “And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend and sing a faery sing”, and it seemed the knight could do anything for her and for his love.These all expressions of his emotions  made  me think that a man  had lost control of himself and everything, when he met a beautiful woman, who could seduced him so easy by singing and her appearance. And in the end the lady took him to cavern and made him asleep, left him alone and cold on the “hill’s side”.(“ And there she lulled me asleep , And there I dreamed, ah woe betide! The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill’s side.”) This poem had  an unpredictable end, since not a man left  a woman and felt fine ,but here was a woman ,who charmed the knight and left him broken in his feelings. I see a new wave of changes  in images of women in the literature of the nineteenth century.

     “The Lady with the Dog” was a story about a man( Gurov) ,who was ”womanizer”, didn’t care about women , “to whom he referred  as the lower race”. His view of Anna Sergeevna was  the same as he considered any other woman , but within time it had changed and Gurov fell in love with her, and he never experienced before in his life.” … he secretly considered her shallow, narrow-minded , and dowdy, he stood in awe of her, and disliked being at home. He had first begun deceiving her long time ago and he was now constantly unfaithful to her..” This is how Gurov thought about his wife, whom he got married in his second year of college. As I see he didn’t love her at all and probably never loved before. It was a typical family of that time,  where was no love, where a husband was cheating on his wife and didn’t feel sorry about it. Gurov couldn’t live a single day without women, he knew what was right to say them, how to seduce and charm  them, and women got attracted to him. The first thought of Gurov , when he saw  the lady with the dog, was “ If she’s here without her husband, and without any friends, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make her acquaintance”. So he was looking for some love adventures. After the first conversation with her, he thought about her a lot, that she was twice younger than him, and Anna Sergeevna seemed  so shy and constrained. Gurov felt it was the first time ,when she started a conversation with a  stranger. He couldn’t forget her appearance  and he liked her, but his thought  “ And yet there’s something pathetic about her” got me back to real Gurov’s personality and his perception of women. After they made love at the hotel, Anna Sergeevna was feeling so bad, because she never deceived her husband and now she was like “ an ordinary woman”(“ It’s not right.You will never respect me anymore”, “ I’m wicked ,fallen woman”, p.1527). She seemed so naïve and pure. Her soul was clean, that’s why Anna Sergeevna felt miserable  and guilty at that moment. Probably it was because of her family education and stereotypes of that society. Gurov tried to calm her down ,but it didn’t work and he got annoyed by this conversation(“Gurov listened to her, bored to death). He didn’t understand how she felt and what was happening in her soul, like any man of that time, who didn’t care about woman’s feelings. I can say he just “satisfied his needs” ,what he wanted to do from the beginning. Later on  when Anna Sergeevna left for Saint- Petersburg, Gurov thought that it was one more adventure in his life and it remained  only a memory. When he came back to Moscow, he couldn’t forget her, it was not only a memory anymore, “ She accompanied him everywhere, like his shadow, following him everywhere he went”. He started to realize that was love, that was his happiness…Everything (house, kids, work ,wife) irritated him. The story took  a beginning from  a spoiled man by women’s attention and love, who transformed  during the story into a person, who realized what love was and that none of those women , had ever been happy with him. He didn’t appreciate any women in his life before he fell in love with Anna Sergeevna. He was not thankful to his wife , for three kids, that they had, he could left home and went for his vacation somewhere. And  a woman  still stayed inferior in the nineteenth century. But there were some changes as well, for example that Anna was in Yalta alone and she was married, it seemed for me unusual. Maybe in the eighteenth century this would affect  reputation of women , who were travelling alone.

     In conclusion , images of women in the world literature were portrayed differently in the nineteenth century. Most stereotypes of the characterization of women  still existed at that moment. Keats’ poem showed not a typical woman, since she left him and he was suffering. In Keat’s work I feel that this woman took a superior role. Chekhov showed us reality of  an ignorant man and an innocent woman.  Indeed the role of women had changed throughout time. The nineteenth century was a beginning  of this adjustment. Today  a woman is completely different that she used to be. Women have equal rights as men, but sometimes I feel a woman lost something that made her a woman, a weak gender and what gave a woman something unique and pure.