Saturday, March 30, 2013

What are three ironies that are found in "The Lady with the Pet Dog" by Anton Chekhov?

If you want to find examples of multiple ironies in this
excellent story, you need look no further than the relationship between the two central
characters, Gurov and Anna, his mistress. Gurov starts off the story as an idle
dilletante who is endowed with the ability to casually seduce women. He sees Anna as
just another diversion or dalliance, wanting to have his fun then return to his life
back in Moscow. However, little does he know that ironically this relationship will
develop into something much more serious, not just a dalliance at
all.


Likewise, this relationship will actually be the
source of Gurov's transformation. Note how at the start of the story he patronisingly
dismisses women as "the lower race." Yet as we can see through his developing love and
friendship for Anna that he is transformed and accepts her as an
equal.


Lastly, it is ironic that Anna and Gurov only find
each other when they are both already married and Gurov himself is aging and not getting
any younger. Note what Gurov thinks about his
relationship:


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He and Anna Sergeyevna loved one another as
people who are very close and intimate, as husband and wife, as dear friends love one
another. It seemed to them that fate had intended them for one another, and they could
not understand why she should have a husband, and he a wife. There were like two
migrating birds, the male and the female, who had been caught and put into separate
cages.



How ironic that Anna
Sergeyevna, who was viewed just as one of many "diversions" for Gurov, should develop
into so much more, should be responsible for Gurov's moral transformation and should
actually be the "wife" of Gurov that he has been waiting for all his
life!

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