Author: Swati

“The peasants called up a picture of a free life such as they had never lived; whether they vaguely recalled the images of stories heard long ago or whether notions of a free life had been handed down to them with their flesh and blood from far-off free ancestors, God knows!”

Isn’t it funny that our dreams don’t care for the time of the day to sneak in on us- as though they are just lurking in the shadows nearby? 

Yet they seem so far-fetched as soon as the light – of what we think the reality is – shines upon us? The same dreams that give hope and purpose to life can cruelly take it away, as the dangers of them being quashed are ever so real.

Dreams, a short story by Anton Chekhov written back in 1886, touches the raw dreamy nerve.

Dreams by Anton Chekhov: Summary and Plot Analysis

The story opens in Eastern Siberia, where two soldiers named Andrey and Nikandr are escorting a male in his early thirties. This unnamed guy doesn’t seem to have any remarkable trait except that he seems to have forgotten his last name. This man is an enigma to both the guards, mainly because he neither fits a peasant nor the nobility’s description. 

One of the guards seems fixated on finding out more about him and strikes a conversation in that attempt.

It turns out that the unnamed man’s mother was of a peasant family but served as a maid in the house of an aristocrat. As a result, He grew up in a comfortable setting, unlike a kid’s upbringing in a peasant family. 

He is well-mannered and can hold a conversation with the gentry. When asked about his father, he confesses to not knowing his identity and suspects that he might have been an illegitimate son of his mother’s – and that he could have had noble blood in him.

It turns out that the tramp was convicted for the murder of his master- that resulted from him handing over a glass of drink to his master. One he thought was soda and acid but was arsenic instead. 

Although he thinks his mother to be a pious lady, he seems to have suspicions with regard to her motivations for doing such a thing. 

Apparently, the master had taken on to another servant in the house, and that didn’t sit well with his mother. He and his mother were both tried – his mother condemned to penal servitude of 20 years, while he was given seven – on account of his youth.

The man ran away with a few other folks and chose not to remember his name, so he doesn’t get recognized and be sent back to penal servitude – a punishment that he deems unfit for a man in delicate health such as his. 

The hardships that he faced do not deter him from dreaming of a spectacular future – one replete with a house, land, living in a bountiful nature where rivers aren’t as bad as the ones in the city and are full of all sorts of fish and fowl. His daydreaming brings to his face a smile that persists. 

Andrey, the more talkative one, fell silent for a while, and so did Nikandr, as they were infected by the tramp’s dreams, thinking of their own. They snap out of it soon enough but not without bringing the tramp down with them. 

After all, he was no more than skin and bones, and he will soon die.

The reader is left with the feeling that the guards are as much prisoners of their circumstances as the tramp. Their freedom is ironic.

Dreams by Anton Chekhov: Review and My Thoughts

Let’s start with Chekhov’s description of the tramp-

His eyebrows were scanty, his expression mild and submissive; he had scarcely a trace of a moustache, though he was over thirty.

This seems like an attempt to establish that this man doesn’t have anything remarkable about him; he could be anybody. Maybe an attempt to say that dreamers are ubiquitous. (It also reminded me of one of my friends struggling with lack of facial hair back in college, the struggle is real, my friends! But I digress..)

When the tramp reminisces of incidents from his past life, there is a certain air of sophistication about his recollections. He does seem to want to stand apart from the peasant class; he doesn’t consider him crass, unrefined as that lot, and wants to be treated that way. 

After all , how many peasant children can eat real food and sleep in a real bed? Even as a grownup, he feels he is better, as he likes reading books and fancies fishing rather than vodka and lewd talk, which is the norm in an adult peasant class. 

She petted and spoiled me, and did her best to take me out of my humble class and make a gentleman of me. I slept in bed, every day I ate a real dinner.

Another man will take no pleasure in anything but vodka and lewd talk, but when I have time I sit in a corner and read a book. I read and I weep and weep.

Maybe I am only a peasant by class, but in nature a noble gentleman.

And I am not fit for penal servitude! I am a refined man in delicate health.

The guards find it unsettling not being able to clearly label the man.

“God knows what to make of you. Peasant you are not, gentleman you are not, but some sort of a thing in between.”

But it is the man’s dreams that got to me. Here is a man, helpless and in a very fragile state who knows not how many days he has got left to live, but comes the opportunity to dream up a world where all of his problems miraculously go away, he forgets all his misery. In the process, he also infects his companions – who seem to be conjuring up their own little heavenly lives, daydreaming.

There is no end of fish; and all sorts of wildfowl. And my greatest pleasure, brothers, is fishing. Give me no bread to eat, but let me sit with a fishhook.

The peasants called up a picture of a free life such as they had never lived; whether they vaguely recalled the images of stories heard long ago or whether notions of a free life had been handed down to them with their flesh and blood from far-off free ancestors, God knows!

The peasants were racking their brains in an effort to grasp their imagination of what can be grasped by none but God- that is, the vast expanse dividing them from the land of freedom.

Realizing that their dreams are as ridiculous as the tramp’s, who is on the verge of death, they shut their dreams out of their mind and force the tramp to do the same, reminding him cruelly of his impending fate. 

How could you? Before you’d gone two hundred miles, you’d give up your soul to God. Just look at what a weakling you are! Here you’ve hardly gone five miles, and you can’t get your breath.

It’s better and practical to live in reality and keep the dreams at bay, the dreams that give them the feeling of fleeting bliss only to leave them thoroughly dissatisfied for much longer, knowing that they may never be able to realize them.

Although the story was heartbreaking, I seek solace in Chekhov’s words:

“We should show life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams.”

We treat you humanely, repay us in the same coin.

What comes to mind when you read this? Who do you think would have said this in a conversation between a rich and a poor man?

Enter Anton Chekhov’s The New Villa.

This is a short story Chekhov wrote way back in 1899. It is split into five parts and centered around the shaken moral grounds from which the peasants operate.

The New Villa: Summary and Plot Analysis

Kutcherov is an engineer in charge of building a bridge across the river two miles away from the village of Obrutchanovo. He is an honest and diligent man and treats the workers humanely. 

His wife comes to visit him from Moscow and finds the village air comforting. They decide to purchase a parcel of land and build a home there. 

Being the engineer he is, he builds a beautiful house adorned with stones and a fountain to greet visitors. This house soon begins to be called the New Villa. 

The engineer and his wife are kind-hearted people and do their best to be good neighbors to the villagers. They attempt to befriend the local people, but the villagers continually complain about their poverty and misuse the newcomers’ goodwill.

Some villagers, influenced and led by the village blacksmith’s son Volodka, even let animals loose to graze around in the villa. Some village girls went and picked mushrooms from the engineer’s gardens, a few others disassembled the engineer’s cart and replaced the new wheels with the old ones, and some mistreat the engineer’s wife. 

In their mind, building a bridge that they did not want was equivalent to the government meddling in their affairs. After all, they had lived without a bridge all their lives; why did things need to change now? What was the need?

Not all the villagers were thankless. Some villagers, represented by Rodion, advise the Kutcherovs to be patient. In time, the villagers will accept them and their idea of building the bridge and the school for them. 

“You must work and work until you overcome them.”

Kutcherov’s patience wears out after repeated acts of vandalism, and the family moves to Moscow shortly after. The new villa, now inhabited by an important-looking but indifferent government clerk, isn’t the focal point of villagers’ wrath anymore.

The New Villa: Review and My Thoughts

This story brings strong memories of a movie I had seen recently called ‘The Parasite’. For the longest time, growing up, I would always assume that the rich treat the poor horribly and that poor people neither have a choice nor the voice to oppose their mistreatment. 

I don’t know why that was. Maybe it was the kind of movies I saw, or the books and newspaper articles that I read. In short, poor people were virtuous and pure. They could do no wrong.

Along comes Chekhov and starts casting doubt on that long-held notion. You would think that born into a family of serfs, he would probably glorify that notion even more. But No! He was not the one to be swayed by the oft-quoted ‘nobility in poverty’ idea widely held in his time. Poor people can be as harsh to the rich as rich are to them. 

See what the engineer’s kind family gets back from the villagers they treat so nicely? – Vandalised property, incessant bickering and whining over bridge being built, mistreatment of the family members.

The villagers’ high morals seem to apply only to their group; the ones outside them, the engineer’s family, for example, were fair game.

The peasants are typically scared of landowners because they know that they have the power to hurt them. Learning from the outset that the engineer and his family are nice and kind people who would never do such a thing, the villagers wield all the power, harassing the family for no specific reason. 

You would expect a God-fearing folk to be kind to their neighbor but only to be mistaken. Their politeness is interpreted to be a weakness, and it seems like the so-called ‘weak’ poor would not waste a moment to be brutes to a well-meaning fellow human a few notches above them in financial standing.

Consider Volodka’s constant rant, for example.

“We got on all right without a bridge, we did not ask for it. What do we want a bridge for ? We don’t want it!”

The bridge is making the villagers’ life easy, the engineer has even promised to build a school that would make their children’s lives easier, but the villagers simply won’t have it. The fact that the villagers follow his mindless rant, in general, speaks to a broader societal issue.

Now, these poor villagers are the same ones that don’t shy away from accepting money from the engineer’s wife, citing their misfortunes – not only in their current state but also in their afterlife. 

Speaking about their troubles brings them a weird joy – playing the victim is comforting to these folk –

“Dear lady”, the rich men will be alright in the next world, too. The rich put up candles, pay for the services; give to the beggars, but what can the poor man do? He has no time to make the sign of the cross. He is the beggar of beggars himself; how can he think of his soul? And many sins come from poverty; from trouble we snarl at each other like dogs… We have no luck in this world nor the next. All the luck has fallen to the rich.

She spoked gaily; she was evidently used to talking of her hard life. And Rodion smiled too; he was pleased that his old woman was so clever, so ready of speech.

The list doesn’t just end there, unfortunately.

The same people who were horrible to the kind engineer family were completely docile in front of the new owner, who never responded to their greetings and had an air of indifference about him. Since the new owner did nothing to help the villagers, why would they direct their wrath towards him? Care about them and they bite you in response, don’t give a damn about them and they leave you alone. Sounds insane, doesn’t it?

Chekhov’s story is unsettling and haunting.

But nothing you haven’t seen Chekhov do with his stories before.

Have you ever been in a one-sided conversation with someone?

You might have been the enthusiastic participant or the disinterested one. I apologize in advance if it brought back memories of such a misfortune striking you on a date night!

Let me grab my scattered thoughts and try to paint a better picture for you.

Oh wait, why should I even try? Chekhov does it in an infinitely better style with The Post. Published way back in the late 1880s, this short story is one of my favorites.

“I can fancy what adventures you must have had in eleven years! I expect it must be terrible driving? Asks  the student

How fond are you of talking, upon my word! Can’t you keep quiet when you are travelling? Asks the postman”

If I had to summarize the whole story in just a dialogue, I would choose the above excerpt, but why say Yes to a penny when you can have a pound?

The Post: Summary and Plot Analysis

The story begins in the early morning hours at a Post office in a Russian town. The Postmaster asks the postman Ignatyev to take the post and with it, his nephew who is a student.

Taking a person with the mail cart is not allowed but the postmaster does that to avoid paying for a carriage for his nephew’s commute. The postman takes him on, in what appears to be a half-hearted manner. The student is too excited to notice the postman’s reservations.

Now the student, trying to be affable to the postman, attempts to strike a conversation with him, to which he doesn’t receive any response.

Further attempts meet the same fate. The student soon gets distracted by the ruckus created by one of the horses pulling the carriage in a completely dark forest route.

The student gets bashed against the cart repeatedly, sometimes hanging on to the postman or to the driver’s belt. It all culminates into a mail bag as well as the postman thrown off it.

The situation finally calms down.

The student has had a few bruises but hasn’t lost his sense of adventure yet and still feels excited about his journey ahead. In a spirit to share the same sense of adventure, the student tries to strike the conversation again.

This time however, he does get a response, albeit the one asking him to be silent.

The student, taken aback, concedes to the postman’s demand and decides to stay silent for the rest of the journey. He is later surprised when the postman starts complaining about having to bring the student along in the mail cart against his wishes.

The student, puzzled, asks the postman the reason for not expressing his reservations before, to which he is greeted with silence again.

The Post: Review and My Thoughts

I read the story twice, and needless to say, I loved it!

The story is short but is packed with moments that would make you laugh , ruminate over motivations behind human behavior all the time marvelling at the writer’s excellent penmanship.

Some quotes from The Post

Chekhov can even bring the cart and the bells to life. Excellent personification! Check this out : 

The cart squeaked, moved. The big bell lamented, the little bells laughed.

Wheels and hoofs knocked against huge roots and the mail cart swayed from side to side as though it were drunk.

The cart suddenly bounded as though in the throes of a convulsion, began trembling, and, with a creak, lurched heavily first to the right and then to the left, and at a fearful pace dashed along the forest track.

My visualization skills are mediocre at best, but I had so much fun imagining a drunk cart zig-zagging !

The comic setting is hard to ignore as well, Consider these for example:

Prickly pine branches were continually hitting the student on his cap and a spider’s web settled on his face.

The student, violently shaken, bent forward and tried to find something to catch hold of so as to keep his balance and save himself from being thrown out, but the leather bags were slippery, and the driver, whose belt the student tried to catch at, was himself tossed up and down and seemed every moment on the point of flying out.

The student fell and bruised his forehead against the driver’s seat, but was at once tossed back again and knocked his spine violently against the back of the cart.

The student definitely would have been in a bad shape after such an ordeal, but I, selfishly, laughed to my heart’s content. Trying to keep from falling off a cart by holding someone’s belt, for god’s sake!

There was also a scene in the story where the postman goes looking for the sword and the mailbag that gets thrown off the cart. Sword ! Really? What fun days carrying the post!

It won’t be a Chekhovian tale, if it does not make you think. This one’s no exception. Consider this conversation for example:

I can fancy what adventures you must have had in eleven years! I expect it must be terrible driving?

How fond are you of talking, upon my word! Can’t you keep quiet when you are travelling?

The student, although having just had a harrowing experience in the forest, is still thrilled by the anticipation of adventure and strikes a conversation. He is excited at the prospect of hearing stories from the postman.

However, as soon as he is snubbed by him, he seems to embrace a certain melancholy attitude himself. Does a little part of the student become the postman? That being the case, how long before he fully becomes him? Is monotony of daily adult life ,a catalyst in this transition?

The chill of the morning and the surliness of the postman gradually infected the student. He looked apathetically at the country around him, waited for the warmth of the sun, and thought of nothing but how dreadful and horrible it must be for the poor grass and trees to endure the cold nights.

It’s not long after that the postman makes his disappointment known openly. 

It’s against the regulation to take anyone with the post. I do not wish it( to take anyone with the post)

Why didn’t you say so before, if you don’t like it?

The postman made no answer but still had an unfriendly, angry expression.

The clueless student is left wondering-

With whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty? With the autumn nights?

Now, I will be honest. I did judge the postman in my first read of the story. How mean! All the poor boy was trying to do was to strike a polite conversation. The postman chose to either shrink deeper into his coat or decided to completely ignore him.

He even reminded me of one of my colleagues back when I was fresh out of college and had just started working.

Of course, I felt bad for the boy because, well, he reminded me of me.

What all these years in the company of good patient friends has taught me, is that you have to give the villain a chance. So a chance is what I gave to the postman and read the story a second time, keeping the postman’s perspective in mind.

I could still not agree with his behavior towards the boy but I did end up having a better appreciation for why he did what he did.

With whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty? With the autumn nights?

As to finding the answer to this question, well, I have had no luck but I have strong suspicion that the search for it  is going to lead me in front of a mirror with a head full of grey hair.

“I took him for my soul’s salvation” –  Matvey Savitch tells Drudya, in Chekhov’s Peasant Wives.

You might read such a thing and your first guess would probably be that the character must be a highly conscientious person. 

Aren’t you in for a surprise!

Peasant Wives, is a short story by Anton Chekhov, that was first published way back in 1891, in an issue of Novoye Vremya. It was in Tolstoy’s favorite list and you will soon figure out why.

Peasant Wives: Plot Summary and Analysis

Set in the Russian village of Reybuzh, Peasant Wives is a story that revolves predominantly around the  character of Matsey Savitch, a trader, who comes to board at  the house of a man called Drudya, an elderly tyrant who has two sons, one called Fyodor who works and lives in the city, while his ailing wife Sofya lives with her in laws.

Another son called Alyoshka, a drunkard hunchback, lives with a very young and beautiful wife Varvara.

Travellers lodging at their house usually ask Varvara to serve them, as she is a ‘handsome woman, smart and buxom’.

The women are basically treated as servants at the house. Drudya, who likes hearing stories from his lodgers, strikes a conversation with their guest, Matsey Savitch, enquiring if the little boy accompanying him that day was his son.

He gets to know that the boy, Kuzka, is actually an orphan, which Matvey seems to have taken in for his soul’s salvation. He begins talking at length about his history.

Turns out that, back in the day in his old village, he was infatuated with the neighbor’s wife called Mashenka, whose husband was away on military duty. He seemed to keep finding excuses to be in Mashenka’s company, fixing windows, counting the pigeons and what not.

Not much time passed before he felt completely captivated by her beauty and declared his love for her.

That day on, Matvey and Mashenka started living as man and wife. The infatuation that he felt for her, eventually wore off, as his mother lined up potential matches for him.

Unsure of how to break the news to Mashenka, he kept postponing , until one day, Mashenka’s husband Vasya wrote him a letter that he was being discharged from military duty on account of him being ill.

Mashenka vehemently opposed the idea of living with Vasya, as she was now in love with Matvey and wanted to be with no one else with him. Matvey, tries to instill fear of God in her by quoting scriptures and emphasising the magnanimity of the sins they committed but Mashenka was not the one to hear.

The husband came back soon, visibly happy at being reunited with the family.

The happiness didn’t last long, as Mashenka couldn’t stand the company of her husband. Frequent scenes of Mashenka begging Matvey to take her back finally got to Vasya and he beat her up badly.

Soon after, Vasya died of something like Cholera, but it was later revealed that the guy was poisoned. Mashenka and Kuzka were taken away and imprisoned. Mashenka died soon after and Kuzka was sent home.

Matvey took him in , because ‘although he was a convict’s child, he was still a Christian’

Matevy and the old man later retire to bed. 

Later that night, Varvara returns home after laying with the priest’s son and confesses in front of Sofya, without a shred of guilt.

Although considering that a sin, Sofya feels a bit sorry for herself that she didn’t try those adventures herself when she was young. They soon find themselves discussing Matvey’s story and ruminate on their own terrible lives. Varvara even suggests that they poison Drudya and Alyoshka to free themselves.

Although dazed by such a statement because of God’s wrath that it could invoke, Sofya still finds herself wondering about it before drifting off to sleep.

The next morning Matvey Satvitch settles his account and he and the boy leave.

Peasant Wives: Review and My Thoughts

I absolutely loved the story mostly because I hated it too much, I was filled with disgust at Matvey Savitch, pity for Mashenka, hatred for Drudya, hopelessness for Sofya and Kuzka, well, I don’t think I can put in words what I felt for the poor boy.

Not that Chekhov ever disappoints with any of his stories, but this was particularly haunting. Characters, however small their parts were, they all spoke.

Some Notable Quotes from Peasant Wives

As always Chekhov displays his astute writing skills, a good picture of peasant mentality is it not?

His elder son, Fyodor, is head engineer in the factory, and, as the peasants say of him, he has risen so high in the world that he is quite out of reach now.

Look at the variety of takes on role of women in the society

The house was left without a woman to look after it, and that’s for all the world like a man without an eye.

You are a Christian woman and have read the scriptures, What is written there? Once married, with her husband she must live.

From the womankind comes much evil in the world and every kind of abomination, Not we sinners only, saints have been led astray by them.

A year had not passed when the Evil one, the enemy of all mankind, confounded me.

Live like a dog and you must die a dog’s death.

Now with the opening sentence , you might be confused into believing that a woman, being a man’s eye(extremely important), would be afforded respect. 

Prepare to be mistaken! 

Drudya’s wives and daughters in law are no more than servants to him. And Matvey doesn’t seem any different in that regard either, so the emotion ranges far and beyond Drudya’s village.

This is actually a society wide norm. You are a good Christian woman only if you stick with your spouse regardless of how he treats you. You ,of course, can’t have a mind of your own, and God forbid, should you ever speak your mind. Oh how that makes me puke!

But If I actually had to choose someone from this story to reward them with the ‘Absolute hypocrite’ badge of honor, it would be Matvey Satvitch hands down. The guy single handed ruined a family – seducing a woman, and then growing un-enamored with her at the prospect of a match his mother was finding for him – and had the audacity of calling her a sinner.

As if that isn’t enough, he is implying that he was being a good Christian by taking in the son of a convict for his soul’s salvation.

No; adopted. An orphan. I took him for my soul’s salvation.

There is no salvation for you Mister Savitch.

All hope is not lost though, women although treated without any respect still haven’t lost their humanity. Looking at the poor orphan boy, Sofya’s maternal instincts kick in.

“The little orphan is asleep. He is thin and frail, nothing but bones. No mother and noone to care for him properly”

“Doesn’t remember his mother I suppose.. How could he remember.. And big tears began dropping from Sofya’s eyes”

Dreary as this story is, all hope is not lost for humanity.

Peasant Wives is, in many respects, a thematic prototype for many of Chekhov’s later stories which depict the cruel treatment of women among the peasants and the lower middle classes. 

You might be surprised to know that this highly remarkable story was banned from both the school and public libraries. Dmitry Averkiyev, the erstwhile committee member of the Ministry of Education deemed it unfit  for such distribution saying “The story is well written, but its moral foundations are too shaky for it to be considered fit for public libraries.”

Looking into the mirror is painful for our societies.

Thank you Chekhov for reminding us just that.