What conflicts does Gurov face in “The Lady with the Pet Dog” and how does Chekhov present or portray these conflicts? Also, talk about how these conflicts change throughout the story.
Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna, both parted from their significant others, find each other in their times of loneliness and eventually fall in love with one another. In “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” Anton Chekhov portrays a strong theme of love, but he also presents a conflict within the characters themselves. The main character, Gurov, is faced with a number of conflicts within himself and Chekhov does a great job in making it obvious for the reader to isolate. Anton Chekhov begins the story with a description of Dmitri Gurov’s home life. Chekhov writes, “and though he secretly considered her shallow, narrow-minded, and dowdy, he stood in awe of her, and disliked being at home. He had begun deceiving her long ago and he was now constantly unfaithful to her.” This passage portrays Gurov’s unhappiness with his life. He had been pressured into marrying his wife in only his third year of college and now was suffering the consequences of making a life-long commitment too early.
This dissatisfaction, therefore, leads him to cheat on his wife. Constantly being unfaithful meant that he had to live a secret life, one of which nobody but himself knew of. “He led a double life—one in public, in the sight of all whom it concerned, full of conventional deception, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances, and another which flowed in secret.” This secret life gave Gurov a sense of fulfillment and overcame any unhappiness he felt in his surface life. It gave Gurov a chance to feel as if his life wasn’t a full mistake and let him live the life that he had always wanted to live. “The utter idleness, these kisses in broad daylight, accompanied by furtive glances and the fear of discovery, the heat, the smell of the sea, and the idle, smart, well-fed people continually crossing their field of vision, seemed to have given him a new lease in life.” These secret rendevous were like air to Gurov, without it one could not breath and would eventually die. It gave him new life, a reason to live. Throughout the story, Chekhov writes of many liaisons that Gurov shares with women. One reason Gurov may have become involved with so many different women is that when the relationship was new, everything was very exciting and passionate for him.
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Every time he met a new women it was a pleasant change, but inevitably the relationship would turn sour and develop into a complex problem. Chekhov writes, “Every time he encountered an attractive woman he forgot all about this experience, the desire for life surged up in him, and everything seemed simple and amusing”. Gurov enjoyed having one woman after the other. He seemed to tire easily of them, and when he did, he just jumped right into another relationship. These encounters with complete strangers allows Gurov to mask himself and portray himself differently, the way these women wanted him to be. “Women had always believed him different from what he really was, had loved in him not himself but the man their imagination pictured him, a man they had sought for eagerly all their lives.” Gurov was able to hide his real self and only present a side of him that he wanted these women to see.
Chekhov describes Gurov as a man who preferred the company of a woman. In the company of men, he was bored, always cold and reserved, as opposed to the comfort he felt when being with a woman. Gurov could not exist a single day without women, yet he refers to them as an inferior breed, or as “the lower race”. The reason he spoke so slightingly of women was due to his bitter experiences with women; more specifically, his unhappiness and inability to love his wife. He felt as if this entitled him to call women whatever he liked, but why should somebody refer to women as “the lower race” if they enjoyed the company of women so much. Gurov grew very tiresome of these women quickly and seemed not to have the slightest regret or remorse of hurting them.
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Gurov’s relationship with Anna started no different than any of his past liaisons. His behavior to Anna at the beginning of their love affair is characterized by an absence of emotional involvement. There is a situation in “The Lady with the Pet Dog” where Gurov and Anna go back to her room and sleep with one another. After this, Gurov cuts himself a slice of watermelon and eats it while Anna weeps over her unfaithfulness. While she goes on and on about her corruption and wickedness, Gurov sits and listens to her, bored to death. This watermelon scenario symbolizes Gurov’s utter disrespect and disregard for Anna’s thoughts and feelings. This shows that Gurov does not care at all of Anna’s feelings, but only of his own feelings of being alive and feeling as if he had overcome an obstacle and achieved his one and only goal. When time came for Anna to depart and return to her husband, only then did Gurov feel as if he had finally just awakened. His ill-will towards women and his perceptions on how relationships should be seemed to change right then and there. “He was moved and sad, and felt a slight remorse.”
Gurov told himself that this encounter was just another adventure that would leave nothing but a memory, but he was wrong. Being without Anna finally made him realize what he had lost. The whole affair becomes the subject of a daydream to Gurov and ultimately an obsession for him to go and find her to be with her again. “To what End? He hardly knew himself. He only knew that he must see Anna Sergeyevna, must speak to her, arrange a meeting if possible.” Thoughts of Anna consumed Gurov’s everyday life. Everything he did and everywhere he went, his mind wandered and seemed to fix itself on thoughts of her. He was tired of his public life, his reality. He was sick of his children and his job and he moped around as if his heart had been broken. The change brought on by Gurov’s time spent away from Anna is very important because it signifies a change within Gurov himself. He no longer had thoughts of other women or a desire to cheat anymore. He looked at women in the streets, but only to see if there were any like her.
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He wanted Anna Sergeyevna and nobody else would compare or come close to what Gurov felt for her. Gurov sets off for the town of S in his effort to reclaim his lost love. The distance between the two, portrays his love such that he would travel the distance to be with her. When he finally sees her, his heart stops, “and he knew in a flash that the whole world contained no one nearer or dearer to him, no one more important to his happiness”. Gurov finds Anna and they promise to see each other again. An obvious conflict they face is trying to get rid of the necessity to hide their feelings, the deception, living in different towns and going so long without meeting. The most important scene in “The Lady with the Pet Dog” comes towards the end of the story. While caressing Anna, Gurov catches sight of himself in the mirror. He sees that his hair had already begun to turn gray and begins to feel sorry for himself. Chekhov writes, “he had met one woman after another, become intimate with each, parted with each, but had never loved.
And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love for the first time.” Gurov reflects upon his life and begins to realize how he has deceived the woman he loved. Living his life under a mask had brought no kind of deep satisfaction. And only now he knew that to appear different from his real self had no sense of meaning or fulfillment for him. Gurov’s conflict within his inner self versus what he appears and portrays himself to be becomes non-existent at the end of the story. Chekhov writes, “They forgave one another all that they were ashamed of in the past and in the present, and felt this love of theirs had changed them both.”
Gurov finally falls in love realizing that living a lie has brought him to old age without true happiness The conflict of Gurov’s secret life versus his surface life seems to stay steady throughout the story. Chekhov tells of Gurov’s surface lifehis wife and children in part three of “The Lady with the Pet Dog”, and his secret life with Anna in parts one, two and four. Gurov’s secret life becomes more of a major part of his life when he realizes he has fallen in love with Anna, but we are unclear on what happens at the end of the story. Chekhov’s ambiguous ending leaves the reader with a couple of different conclusions, not knowing if Gurov prolonged his secret life and lived happily ever after with Anna or if this relationship was just a mere repetition of the emotional tangle Gurov has been in so many times before.
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