— Alexandra Shyklo
“The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov seems to be one of the most engaging and erratic stories I’ve ever read. Since I began my semester in Dr. Pasquesi’s Great Works course, I have learned to look at stories from a very intellectual and philosophical perspective. We’ve been taught to find a deeper meaning in texts and view them from a super creative point of view – as if there are no right or wrong answers. Reading the story sparked something in me that was unusual for me; I used to look at the big picture of a text, however with this story, I consistently kept gaining more interpretations and ideas about the deeper meaning of it, and about how the minor details affected the entire plot of the text.
For class, we were instructed to create a group presentation on a story of our choice, and I decided to take a look at the options. My group members and I are all Russian, so as soon as I saw a story by Chekhov, a Russian author, I instantly knew we should select this one. Simply the fact that the author was Russian made the story relatable to me and gave our group the opportunity to find first-hand information about it from our families. I began reading the text for the first time when I was lying in bed, on a little getaway in upstate New York. At first, I found it quite boring honestly, especially because I was convinced it was too long of a story and I shouldn’t be reading it on vacation.
I decided to re-read the entire thing once I got back home. At this point, once I started reading, I honestly couldn’t stop. It was so interesting, and I began to look at it from multiple points-of-view. I started to think about Dmitri’s inner thoughts and the reasoning behind them. I researched Russia’s history at the time the story was published and brought up the story to my parents. They knew of the story right away and gave me a ton of information on Russia’s history, and their opinions of the story. Both of my parents brought up their own unique ideas of certain things I never noticed, and I started to view it in a million different perspectives. At that point, I needed to get a paper and a pen to write down all my thoughts. In my opinion, for a text to be considered a “Great Work,” it should have the ability to be interpreted in a ton of different ways, as this one does.
One of the most intriguing components of this story, is that it conveys many relationship scenarios that are still prevalent today. There will always be some sort of social norms that prevent people who are in love from being together. In Russia at the time, it was frowned upon to leave your family and start a new one, so Anna and Dmitri had to love each other in secret. This is evident in so many situations today. A person’s sexuality, for instance, can often contrast their religious morals, preventing them from being with the one(s) they love. Some people have “beards” to cover up their true sexual orientation, and though it is a very difficult thing to do, it is interesting to think that things are so similar now to how they were in 1899. The story shows how love always overshadows idealism and can be relatable to people forever. It definitely is a “Great Work,” in my opinion.
