Reading Journal _ "The Lady with the Dog"

Part I. “Permissible Love”

What Dmitri and Anna had and have… Is it ADULTERY or TRUE LOVE?

Dmitri and Anna started as partners of “a swift, fleeting love affair” but ended as secret, long-distance lovers. How did the young lady with a beret and a white Pomeranian dog become a couple with the man who interacts with “the lower race” only to feel prepared and superior?

Well, their love life was pretty fast-moving. Was it because they were in the particular city of Yalta? Maybe the romance never would have taken place if they had met in another city. A vacation spot full of immoral and supposedly “coincidental” occurrences, Yalta naturally reminded Dmitri of “tales of easy conquests … a romance with an unknown woman, whose name he did not know.” Ha. Perhaps “the lady with the dog” just happened to walk by at the moment. It is understandable, though, to an extent. The narrator describes the scenery of Yalta to be consisted of “a golden streak from the moon,” water that is “of a soft warm lilac hue,” and chirruping grasshoppers. No wonder the two go on a drive, take a walk, and kiss; the atmosphere is the absolute opposite of Moscow, where every single day is a “frosty day” with white snow all over the place.

Dmitri first conceives of his affair with Anna as no more than a fling that simply happened to be a bit more pleasant than the preceding unfaithful commitments, but soon notices that he was wrong. Once he returns to Moscow after Anna leaves to take care of her husband, Dmitri cannot stop thinking of her and admits that she “followed him about everywhere like a shadow and haunted him.” Never having felt this way before, he is dumbstruck for quite a while, but he soon travels to S in search of Anna, and finally meets her in the theater at the production of “The Geisha.”

Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov was once an arrogant and haughty man who knew no one but himself. People did not believe that he could change, not even his wife; however, TRUE LOVE managed to turn him into the genuine “man,” one who is responsible and trustworthy. The development of Dmitri’s attitude toward women, or at least Anna, is clearly illustrated through the noticeable difference in responses to Anna’s actions. He actually cares.

The interesting point, though, is that the wife of Dmitri and the husband of Anna never appeared on stage to present a view. If it was to prevent distraction from the realistic depiction of the affair, it definitely worked. Their absence enables readers to stand in the shoes of Dmitri and Anna and consider if their love is adultery or precious love.

As always, though, Chekhov leaves it up to the readers to arrive at their own conclusions. So, does love need to be approved by others in order to qualify as the “love” we know? Can one be granted permission to love?

Part II. Personal Thoughts

WHY name the story “The Lady with the Dog?”

Throughout the whole story, the exact phrase of “the lady with the dog” is mentioned three times, once in each section. As scarcely as the expression is used in the place of Anna Sergeyevna, it signals the major shifts of Dmitri’s change in attitude towards Anna, maybe even women as a whole.

The first time Dmitri calls Anna “the lady with the dog,” he shows curiosity only because he “had begun to take an interest in new arrivals”; he was bored. Also, it gives off a sense of indifference towards the newcomer, as if the person was absolutely of no importance to the Dmitri. However, the second time he uses the phrase, he clearly conveys the idea that she is different from his earlier immoral partners, as he realizes that their affair would not “end soon” and is in the right place for them to take their relationship to further stages. As time passes, though, Dmitri comes to acknowledge the fact that he is in love, and that Anna is not just any “fleeting affair.” She may happen to be the only real love of his life, the once-in-a-lifetime woman that a man would be lucky enough to meet.

WHY use the 3^rd person (omniscient) as the narrator?

Frankly speaking, I still do not really understand the somewhat twisted mindset of Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov. I wonder if I would have known him better if the story had been written in the 1^st person, where Dmitri might have been more accessible. Having usually responded to love stories with either fondness or envy, I could not do the same with Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog,” as the objective view made it impossible for me to sympathize with the man at all.

Being a story of realism, though, I understand why Chekhov refrained from using the 1^st person narrator. The story depicts an ordinary man and an ordinary woman having an affair, using straightforward details rather than rhetorical devices that are sometimes nothing but confusing. Chekhov’s enlisting of the happenings between Anna and Dmitri without mentioning their innermost emotions casts concentration on the events only, allowing readers to arrive at a conclusion of the question whether love should be permissible in an unbiased state.