What does the story tell us about Chekhov’s beliefs about people’s capacity for self-knowledge?

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.