After months and months of suspense, love has finally been discovered. Love was not discovered by anyone in the classroom. Two characters in Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog- fell in love. It is such a romantic way to end the semester.
Well, enough about school and on to the facts. In every short story read this semester, not one character loved another and was loved back equally. There was murder, deception, manipulation, but never love. .
Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov is the male protagonist in "The Lady with the Dog-. He is married with children and, in his spare time, he has affairs. He does not love his wife, "he was afraid of her and disliked being at home."" (Chekhov 535) It seems clear that he relationship between Dmitri and his wife has become routine and distant. He describes her as how one would describe his/her mother - in - law. "She was a tall, black-browed woman, erect, dignified, austere, and, as she liked to describer herself, a thinking person. (Chekhov 535).
Because of his estranged relationship with his wife, he thinks poorly of all women. After all, he was going from woman to woman. The women he slept with had their own problems; otherwise they would not have slept with him. This led Dmitri to refer to the female gender, "the lower breed."" (Chekhov 535) He was trapped in a loveless marriage and had become jaded and bitter.
No one was more clueless about women then Pozdnyshev in Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata-. He thought that he could find a pretty girl, marry her, and as long as he remained faithful, they would live happily ever after. Pozdnyshev was attracted to her curls and her shapely figure and her purity. Someone that was pure enough to live by his standards. (Tolstoy 369) So, they marry. A few days later, Pozdnyshev discovers her crying and because he is unable to understand his wife, they have a fight. It is the first of many fights. Just as in "The Lady with the Dog-, they become cold and distant to each other.