Self-Destruction

Though we have not encountered any female authors thus far in our readings, the depiction of women in certain nineteenth century texts plays a very important role in their contents’.  Many different authors provide several outlooks on women, their role in literature and their role in society.  Some of these roles are expressed positively, some negatively and others may not even offer their stance.  Irregardless of this, it is possible to trace a pattern across these vastly different viewpoints and locate a central idea or theme associated with multiple texts.  Charles Baudelaire’s poem, “A Carcass”, along with Anton Chekhov’s novella, “The Lady with the Dog”, both contain women as a main focus in their works, however the approaches taken by the authors to characterize them have stark differences.  Despite this, a common ground can be mined from both of these pieces of literature, which expresses the idea that women in this time period have an inevitable, self-destructive nature.

Baudelaire’s “A Carcass” is a very in-your-face poem.  The completely gruesome details of a female corpse laying in plain view begin at the outset of the reading and exist mostly throughout.  The author uses horrifying and grotesque imagery as a device to really deliver a grasp in the reader’s mind of the harshness and reality of the cadaver’s presence.  It is an eye-opening experience and the reader is meant to feel this right away.  The clear use of negative connotations toward the body, one of which being a “lecherous whore”, convey a hidden distaste toward women that Baudelaire holds inside.  This continues in the very same stanza as he describes the “stinking and festering womb” being exposed, indicating that any life she creates will be just as offputting as her.  All of this description of the corpse, and all of its gruesome includings are all part of a bigger theme or idea in this poem, that of the inevitablity of death.  The narrator tells his female companion, “And you, in turn, will be rotten as this: Horrible, filthy, undone, Oh sun of my nature and star of my eyes, My passion, my angel in one!” (36-40).  This dialogue to his partner elicits the truth that although she is his love, his passion and the center of his life, that she, one day, will inevitably lay just as the carcass, rotten, filthy and gruesome, and all of the characteristics given to the carcass will be bestowed on his loved one.  Baudelaire’s hidden distaste toward women as mentioned earlier ultimately exposes the inevitable fate of them, even in the case of his true love.

In Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog”, a far different approach is taken in the characterization of women.  Anna Sergeyevna, whom we first encounter as merely a lady with a dog, is spoken about in quite high regard, at least compared to Baudelaire’s work.  Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov, ever since their first encounter, was always thinking about her. He would picture her finest details such as her “slender, delicate neck and her fine gray eyes”.  Throughtout the novella he becomes very much infatuated with her and views her with great admiration.  Clearly Chekhov’s approach on her characterization is far different from Baudelaire’s.  From Anna’s standpoint, she is a wife who is quite bored with her life and comes to Yalta in search of something, something.  Her boredom and yearning for whatever she may be yearning for ultimately leads her to have an affair with Dmitri, which afterwards, at least temporarily, leaves her despising herself and feeling pitiful.  Her journey to Yalta, bred by boredom leads her to make an inevitable decision in which she betrays her husband.  She sums up her self-destructive actions as she says, “How can I justify myself? I’m a wicked, fallen woman, I despise myself and ahve not the least thought of self-justification…I told myself that there must be a different kind of life I wanted to live, to live….I was burning with curiosity…You’ll never understand that, but I swear to God I could no longer control myself, nothing could hold me back, I told my husband I was ill, and I came here.”  In this statement, she is describing her feelings on her life, her boredom, how she is constantly yearning for more, for something else.  Her dissatisfaction with her normal life and her husband lead her to a new place.  Her independence is her demise.  The second she decides to leave S. and come to Yalta is where she self-destructs.  She walks around with her pomeranian every day in the same spot for what reason? To find something, to find what she is looking for, and that is excitement.  She immediately falls for a man whom she has affairs with and her whole life changes. It was an inevitable journey.  Chekhov uses Anna Sergeyevna to characterize this aspect of self-destructive women in the nineteenth century.

Literature poses many questions and many puzzles that readers every day strive to find the answers to.  The depiction of women in literature, for our purposes, those in the nineteenth century are just another of these great mysteries that authors love to write about.  Whether approached in a negative way such as in Baudelaire’s work, or positively as in Chekhov’s, each author tries to convey his or he own idea about the nature of these female characters.  In both the accounts, “A Carcass” and “The Lady with the Dog” we see examples of self-destructiveness and inevitability, which may very well be related to societal realities of women in this period.