Month: October 2019

The Lady with the Dog- By Anton Chekhov

The significance of the two lovers meeting at Yalta, a resort town, is to show that they are both running away from their situation in their hometowns. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov is running away from his problems at home in Moscow. He’s not close to his wife and views women as inferior human beings. He doesn’t love his wife nor the experiences he has with Moscow people. He thinks the society of men is boring so he would much rather spend his time with women. He feels at ease and more like his real self whenever he is with a woman because they’re interesting and they amuse him. Similarly, Anna Sergeyevna hates her current life with her husband. They both went to Yalta in order to seek temporary relief from their situations at home and to seek comfort in another person’s arms. 

Gurov had been with many women before, “from the past he preserved memories of careless, good-natured women, who loved cheerfully and were grateful to him for the happiness he gave them, however brief it might be.” This shows that Gurov enjoys flirting and being with another woman to make them feel special as a form of entertainment for himself, and it is what he lives for. Gurov’s intentions are clear from the very beginning, he approaches Anna because of her mysteriousness. He sees her as just another woman to fulfill his interests and lust. Anna, who is married, knows that Gurov is pursuing her because this is the first time where she is alone and being followed, looked at, and spoken to from strangers because they don’t know her identity here nor do they know that she is married. It is implied that if you come to this resort town then you are seeking a companion. Even though Anna waited for her husband to come pick her up, she eventually gives up and allows Gurov to get close with her even though she knows it’s wrong. It seems as though Yalta, a resort town, is where people come to commit adultery and to forget their miserable lives back home.  

 

Gabriel is somewhat portrayed as above than the rest, he dumbs down his superior knowledge so others can “understand” him better. He tailors himself based on who he talks to in order to be admired by everyone. Although he seems like the perfect family man, his interactions with other woman end up being awkward or offensive, especially with Miss Ivor and Lily. Other characters seem dead on the inside while holding onto the past and unable to let go. Meanwhile Micheal wishes for everyone to live in the present and to not remind themselves of the past.

How does one reconcile Gurov’s apparent misogyny with his newfound of love of Anna Sergeyevna?

In the beginning of the story “The Lady with the Dog,” Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov’s character is the embodiment of a misogynist. He is a married man with 3 children but still proceed to seek affairs. He labels women as “the lower race” and always “spoke ill of women” (1). His mindset denounces women and brand women as objects that he could use to his disposal. It is also described that Gurov has a way with women, which makes it easier for him to use women for pleasure and discard them afterwards. However, the affair with Anna Sergeyevna seem to change Gurov. He, himself, believed that his affair with Sergeyevna is like the other affairs that he had before, but it was not. Gurov believes that his memories of Sergeyevna will soon dissipate and that he can continue his everyday routine, but it was the complete opposite. Soon after their affair ended, he begins to reminisce about their time together. As the days pass, his memories and desire for Sergeyevna “glowed more and more vividly” (6). As a result, Gurov travels to Sergeyevna and confesses to her. Towards the end of the story, when Gurov meets Sergeyevna again, there’s this epiphany moment where Gurov “understood clearly that for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so precious, and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable, lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy” (7). Despite how ordinary Sergeyevna is, she’s still the apple to his eyes and he loves her nonetheless. This is a huge change from the beginning of the story from his negative and judgmental view of women to describing Sergeyevna as precious and important. Gurov started off the story seeking pleasures from women to keep his boredom at bay to trying to find a solution to be with Sergeyevna permanently.

Consider the symbolism (or various symbolisms or meanings or emotional or psychological values) of the gilded coin in the story.

According to Merriam Webster dictionary, Gilded has many definitions but the 2 that are most notable in this story are “to overlay with or as if with a thin covering of gold” and “to give an attractive but often deceptive appearance to.” To provide some background into this story, Missie May and Joe are a happily married African-american couple living in the southern US in the 1930s. Otis D. Slemmons, an African-american from the north arrives in town and meets Missie May where Missie May commits infidelity with Slemmons. The gilded coin is important because the coin was given to May by Slemmons and is a symbol of Slemmons himself. On the outside a gilded coin is supposed to be a thin covering of gold meant to reflect a royal appearance and that is what Slemmons does in the story, arriving in town flashing fancy clothes and gold. However, this was just a facade and Slemmons wasn’t a wealthy/respectable northerner but a fraud. The 2nd defitintion of gilded if reflected here, where Slemmon’s appearance was a deception. He was faking his image of wealth flashing his clothes and gold when in fact he wasn’t wealthy at all.

In “The Lady with the Dog”, Chekhov introduces Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, the main character, as a womanizer and woman killer. While married with children, Gurov considers women to be “the lower race,” and is continuously unfaithful with his wife. Before his encounter with “The Lady with the Dog,” Gurov believed that he had the ability to “allure women and dispose them in his favour,” showing that he thought he had a sort of power over the women and felt no emotional attachment to the women he was unfaithful with. However after meeting Anna Sereyevna, he realizes that he had somehow become infatuated and in love with her, completely stripping away his previous identity of being a woman killer. By travelling to her city and following her, Gurov shows that he was not a woman killer, but simply had not found the right person. The story tells us that while we can have a self-proclaimed image about ourselves, an event can occur and immediately change that self-proclaimed image, exposing our true selves.

In her short story, “The Dead”, the differences between Gabriel and his family are evident. His encounters with Miss Ivors represents the rejection of his culture and his past. I believe that “dead” in the story constitute the past as the living represent the future. Gabriel wants change in the present to depict the future because as he says times are changing and not always for the good. His interaction with Miss Ivors proves to be the gap between the past and the present. The past being Gabriel’s Irish culture and Miss Ivors view of the world and the present being Gabriel’s realization that he is tired of his culture and the past and wants to move on to the present with a new culture. When Miss Ivors calls Gabriel a “Brit”, she realizes Gabriel has terminated his relationship with his culture and has assimilated to the new culture of British controlled Ireland.

How does Joyce change your expectations as a reader throughout the story? e.g. your idea of what the story is about and what kind of story you are reading might have changed at a few points throughout the story. 

I was initially expecting a relaxed mood in the dinner party but the play ended with a sad mood. When the party was described in the beginning it was described as “a great affair, the …Never once had it fallen” showing a fun environment where we wouldn’t expect anything sad. Later on into the story, a few noticeable changes that shift the mood include the snow pouring down on them and a few characters opening up about how they live a very routine life without purpose. The characters live very mundane lives and cant escape them. Another important mood shifter was Greta opening up about mourning over an old childhood love. All these subtle and obvious changes shifted my experience of the story from light-hearted to gloomy.

Joyce depicted Gabriel as an inexpressive character/protagonist. Gabriel tends to not follow the norm of social life because he was afraid of hurting others’ feelings if he say something out of the ordinary. Other characters in Joyce’s story tend to be blunt and expressive about themselves and to others around them. In a way, all the characters in Joyce’s story have something that they believe in or grasp upon, which keeps them lingering in the past. For instance, Lily might have had disturbing/toxic past relationships, which cause her to feel indifferent about men, Gretta couldn’t forget Michael, who was her first love, and Gabriel thinks politic issues shouldn’t be mixed with literature. Thus, he was taught and raise that way. I believe Gabriel tends to be more of a considerate character compared to others because he thinks before he acts and he would say things accordingly based on the situation/event.

~ Neo

How does Joyce depict the differences between Gabriel and the other characters in the story? How are they similar and different? 

Joyce makes clear every character’s personality, by describing them in details. for instance, in the beginning of the story he mentions that “Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve’s, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, did housemaid’s work for them”(Joyce 1). Same as Gabriel, he has a self-deceptive personality and he is always disappointed. He does not believe in himself. Anytime there is a conversation, his intention is to hide something from others, or the other way around. If someone wants to tell him the bitter truth he tries to avoid it. In my idea, Gabriel is a weak person who does not or cannot tolerate the reality. however, through the end of the story he understands that he should not be always running away from the truth, he realizes that avoiding the truth does not change anything. and he listens to the most bitter truth and secret of his wife patiently. I would say that his wife’s character is more similar to him because she hid something very important from him, all these years she just pretended that she loves him and she is happy.

Yalta, to Anna and Dmitri, is a place where they can be different people and escape the “boring” routines of their everyday lives. Yalta, a resort town, is described by Anna and Dmitri as being “dull” which is ironic considering that a resort town is meant to be a place to have fun. Although, since this is a vacationing spot, it’s also a place where people can experiment and find themselves. Such being the case with Anna and Dmitri. As their relationship starts to progress they become more aware of their environment and develop a different perception about the town, with Yalta starting to bring a comfort to them. Yalta is also neutral territory for both which better allows for a relationship to develop between them. Anton Chekhov, in describing their developing relationship, uses imagery as a way to show their state of minds and growing affection for one another.