A comparison of Chekhov's and Oates' authorial approaches
to constructing the nature of the affairs in "The Lady with the Dog" and "The Lady with
the Pet Dog," respectively, reveals that there is a most important similarity in what
the authors decided to do and a most important
difference.
The most important similar decision the two
authors make is to reveal the profound emotional and psychological affects of the
affairs on the women. Chekhov describes very powerfully how his Anna was still wrapped
in the "diffidence" of "inexperienced youth" and of how her loosened hair "hung down
mournfully" and of how she was "dejected," as "though it were her fall." She speaks of
needing forgiveness and of how the world now has the right to despise her--of how Gurov
will now despise her. In a similar vein, though with a different psychological dynamic,
Oates describes how her Anna is driven to thoughts of ending her life because she finds
the repetition in which she is caught unbearable and because she longs for a marriage to
the man she truly loves.
The most important different
decision the two authors make is how to end the stories. Chekhov ends with Anna in dire
psychological pain and spiritual depression caused by great inner suffering as she
blames herself for spiritual and moral failure. The final scene has Anna and Gurov in a
modest hotel room in Moscow sharing a commitment to "think of some plan" to end the
secrecy and deception and the long separations--but "How? How?...How?" Oates end her
story with her Anna turning away from impulses toward self-destruction and having an
epiphany of how she and her lover have a true marriage of hearts and of how that was a
sublime and wonderful truth.
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