Anton Chekhov's The Lady With A Pet Dog

The Lady with a Pet Dog – Essay Three
If one is not familiar with Chekhov and his writing, when reading “The Lady with a Pet Dog” they first might assume that the story is about marital infidelity and therefore Chekhov is most likely preaching to us about the loss of morals in humanity. However as the reader keeps reading they see that Chekhov is not judgmental of the main characters he just wants to write about the realities of life without having the reader assume a character or an act is immoral. We know this because in one of his letters Chekhov wrote, “When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective elements that are lacking in the story” (205). Most of his works Chekhov writes about life and the hard hand it sometimes deals out to some. One might think that with such a subject it is not possible to write an engaging story without putting the crowd to sleep. Yet even though his short and concise stories are all about the everyday happenings, Chekhov has a way of writing that strangely resonates with the reader. We end up feeling sorry for Dmitri and Anna, wishing that they could have somehow found a way to be together. This is because we have all either experienced or

She got married to him because she was curious “I wanted something better. There must be a different sort of life…I wanted to live! To live, to live!” (195) She lives in a house, which is surrounded by a big gray fence. I feel like this fence represents Anna’s life, grey and bleak and the fence represents her being trapped. She, same as Dmitri, is not happy with her life. Seeking a respite for her boredom she visits the town of Yalta. Apparently Anna’s husband knows she is not happy and even suspects her in an affair because later when she starts visiting Dmitri in Moscow Chekhov writes that her husband did and did not believe her reason for going to