The lady with the dog

Short summary
Dmitri Dietrich Gurov is on vacation in Yalta, a seaside resort in Imperial Russia. He is
married and has three children – a daughter and two sons. Gurov is nearly forty years old,
but because of lack of love to his own wife, he has affairs with many women. Nearly
every pretty woman he meets becomes an object of admiration. And now in Yalta
appears a new face – an unknown beautiful woman; nobody knows either who she is or
where she came from. Over several days, Gurov became sure that she was here alone, so
he attempted to get acquainted with her. His attempt was successful, when dining at the
local restaurant she entered and set at the table near his, Gurov stood up and started a
conversation. He first treated her dog, a little Pomeranian, with a bone, and thus their
acquaintance took place.

Together, they left the restaurant and talked for few hours walking by the coast. Only
then Gurov found out her name – Anna Sergeyevna. She was married, but her vague
answers about her husband, his profession, created an impression that she knew little of
her husband and, probably, did not love him. When going to bed that night, Gurov was
sure he would see her next day.

He was right. During next week they met every day and became closer and closer. One
day their relationship changed as they became lovers. Anna Sergeyevna was not like
other women Gurov met, he admitted it. She was very concerned that he would not
consider her “a fallen woman”, the element of respect was essential for her.

One day a letter from her husband came informing that he had problems with his eyes,
could not join her in Yalta and asked her to return back to the town S.. She immediately
left. They parted on the platform, saying goodbye forever. When the trained disappeared
Gurov thought it was time for him to leave for Moscow as well.

Gurov thought of his affair with Anna just like of any other, since when he arrived to
Moscow his recollections began to get obscure. But it was only because he missed his life
here, and when everything around him appeared as hackneyed as it was, that he started
thinking of Anna more and more often. When finally these memories could not leave
him, Gurov took his case and went to the town S.. He found the house of Anna
Sergeyevna, as he knew her surname - von Diederitz - which was rare, and her husband
was a rather known person. To find the house was not a problem, but a real problem was
to see Anna Sergeyevna. It was winter, and very cold outside. Gurov did not want to
provoke a scandal appearing right in front of her in her house, so he kept walking by the
fence in a hope she might come out. But she did not. Gurov had lost both temper and
hope, so decided to leave for Moscow immediately, but at the train station he saw a
poster of the play and thought that Anna probably would be there. He was right. They
met in the theatre. She almost fainted when saw him as Anna was with her husband. They
exchanged few words and she implored Gurov to leave at once, and promised she would
come to Moscow to see him. She kept her word.
Over the course of many years, Anna went to Moscow every two or three months, under
the pretext of visiting a doctor there. She and Gurov met at the hotel “Slavyanski
Bazaar”, and their meetings were always passionate and sincere.

Anna came as usual, it was winter. When Gurov entered the room, he saw Anna crying.
She was crying because she loved Gurov and could not bear the situation they lived in.
For Gurov it was also hard, as Anna became the only woman he ever loved truly. They
talked all night long what they could do to be together, but the solution was far away, and
both understood that this might never end.

Themes

Love
From reading "The Lady with the Dog," it would seem that love is involuntary. People
are made victims of it – often in the worst times, places, and circumstances – beyond
their control. Love has the power to fundamentally change people, transforming their
character and mindset completely. It is often painful, inconvenient, and difficult. And yet,
there is something touching and beautiful about the love in this story that overshadows all
the pain, the inconvenience, the difficulty. Love brings with it a hope and a promise for
something better.

DISSATISFACTION
In this story, dissatisfaction – with, marriage, family, work, and life in general – is a big
motivating factor for action. Two adulterous lovers find themselves in each other's arms
largely as the result of their own dissatisfied lives. Such unhappiness, however, is not so
easily cured. Can sex satisfy a restless heart? Can love? What are the consequences of
such decisions? "The Lady with the Dog" explores many such questions.

Isolation
The Lady with the Dog" explores many different kinds of isolation. First there is the
isolation from the rest of the world that two secret lovers feel when together. Despite this
closeness, the two lovers are separated even from each other, due to an inability to
understand the world from the others' perspective. In its final pages, the story suggests
that in fact every man is isolated from all other men, since that which is most valuable is
always kept secret from the rest of the world.

Reputation
The Lady with the Dog" reminds us that the threat of scandal always looms. For two
adulterous lovers, reputation is forever at risk, as are their marriages and lifestyles. The
story also focuses on the idea of social status and class. For one very class-conscious
protagonist, only the truest of love can cross class-defined social barriers.
FATE AND FREE WILL
In "The Lady with the Dog," two lovers – both married to other people – lament
their predicament and what they consider a shared ill-fate. But should fate be
blamed for these unfortunate circumstances? How much personal responsibility
lies with the two lovers to begin with? Chekhov's tale deals realistically, not
romantically, with the consequences and difficulty of such a "fate."

CHARACTER

Dmitriy Dmitrievich Gurov

Dmitriy Dmitrievich Gurov is a typical lady-killer for whom the sensory aspects are not
important. He is an elderly man of about forty years, Muscovite, burdened with three
children, the unloved wife and boring banking job. Dmitriy Dmitrievich is unhappy with
his family life, he’s afraid of his wife and does not like to be in his own home for a long
time. It says that his main function - to be a head of the family, the owner - he does not
perform. Loneliness pushes Gurov to frequent betrayals that do not cause any regret. He
had lost faith in the true feelings, and perceives women as "inferior race". The hero is
moved only by a fleeting interest, vile passions and desire to amuse vanity. Gurov, his
acquaintances and the women are a society of hypocrites and liars, who do not want to
live a rich spiritual life, do not know the high feelings.
Anna Sergeevna von Diderits
She’s a young woman, of low growth, blonde. Chekhov makes a slight emphasis on the
color of her hair and a white Spitz not by chance. White color alludes to purity,
maidenhead and chastity. The heroine was born in St. Petersburg, married early and went
to the small town S. Her husband is an unremarkable man, as she calls him - "lackey."
Anna, devoured by a thirst for life, curiosity of youth, leaves her husband and goes to
Yalta. She is a person with subtle mental entity. She is not spoile.

Symbolism
The White Dog
The titular canine is describe quite early in the story as being not only white, but being
Anna’s constant companion every time she shows up for her walk. Melville’s typical
idiosyncratic symbolism notwithstanding, the color white is one of the most dependable
and reliable bits of symbolism in literature. Unless otherwise indicated (Moby-Dick, for
instance) white means purity and innocence. Which is the state of Anna’s marriage before
the arrival of Gurov.
Shades of Gray
The word gray is used in the story on nine different occasions to describe the shade of
everything from Anna’s eyes to army clothe on the floor of Gurov’s hotel room to the
color of his favorite of Anna’s dresses to, most importantly, that long fence with the nails.
(More on that later). Both of these characters have lived lives seeing things in black and
white and adhering to standard conventions and traditions of society. They are about to
rebel and when one rebels against conformity, one begins to notice the subtle shades of
gray between those stark lines of black and white that were easily overlooked before.
The Fence
The fence studded with nails would serve the same symbolic function whether it was part
of the gray motif or bright orange with red polka dots. Like whiteness, fences are fairly
reliable indicators of the author’s meaning: fences are like walls in that they represent
enclosure and possibly even imprisonment. Unlike walls, however, fences also carry the
connotation of being easier to tear down or break through.
The Theater
The theater staging the performance of “The Geisha” in the story comes under perhaps
the most withering attack in the story. In fact, the paragraph that is just one delineation of
the absurdly predictable pretentious of its attendees may strike some as being slightly out
of step with the rest of the narrative. Keep in mind that Chekhov is not just considered
one of the greatest short story writers of all time, but also one of the greatest of the
playwrights of all time and his dismissal of everything being describe in that paragraph as
an example of every other “provincial theater” in Russia should not be taken lightly.
Essentially, the symbolic of that theater can properly be applied to the flames of
damnation. For Sartre, hell was other people; for Chekhov, hell was the pretentiousness
of so much provincial theater.
Anna and Gurov
It wasn’t just provincial theater which Chekhov found hell; it was much of provincial
values and unquestioning acceptance of conforming to what he viewed as meaningless
bourgeois values, military authoritarianism and unfulfilling materialistic pursuits. The
fates of the stand remain completely ambiguous by the story’s close, but the promise is
certainly held out that they represent the coming of a more enlightened period for the
Russian people. This symbolic element was certainly not overlooked when the Bolshevik
Revolution began looking to the great Russian writers of the past find hints of
brotherhood in pre-Marxian fiction. Other critics argue that reducing Anna and Gurov to
post-Revolution revisionist symbols does a disservice to Chekhov's talent at writing
naturalistic fiction.