An accidental kiss, a schoolteacher on the road, a night spent between a married

womanizer and unhappily married woman; with these simple events Anton Chekhov provides a
downward spiral for us readers as we descend into the subconscious minds of his characters. The
more we realize about the characters the more there is to realize and this is all presented through
their perception of events. The narrator gives us some objective information of the reality these
characters inhabit but anything past that is purely the subjective reality of these characters.
Chekhov truly cements the old idea that the world is what one thinks it is. He weaves
thematically bound stories, depicting the powerful emotions of his characters and the way they
shape their life as caused by the perceptions of the worlds they inhabit. Their perception possibly
sets constraints upon them, makes them see things that arent there, ignore things that are,
remember things that didnt happen, and forget things that actually did. His characters are often
unreliable because of the nebulous nature of the human mind that Chekhov expertly captures.
Life goes unfulfilled in many of Chekhovs stories. In some of them, incidentally, it is
because of their own perceptions of themselves and the reality around them. Ryabovich in the
story The Kiss creates an entire fantasy around a trivial event. He fantasizes about the kiss he
himself knew was a complete accident in this sentence His neck still seemed to be bathed with
oil and he could feel the cold tinkle, like that of peppermint, on his lips. (178). One would think
Athena herself descended from Mount Olympus and kissed him with her beautiful lips of a
goddess. He cant even remember which woman it was because the fantasy he created does not
seem to match the reality that we are given. Chekhov communicates this to us in a subtle way of
course, Its difficult to decide, he thought dreamily, If you took the lilac ones arms and
shoulders, added the little blondes forehead, and the eyes of the one sitting at Lobytkos left,
then... (177). He begins fantasizing about an event that he later acknowledges himself is very
common place. People kiss each other all the time yet to him this is some sort of an extraordinary
occurrence. The narrator states And he almost forgot that he was drab and round shouldered,
and had lynx like whiskers, and a nondescript appearance (as it had been described in a female
conversation he once overheard) (176). He has a negative perception of himself, the only vague
evidence of which we are given was a conversation between women that he overheard. Because
of this negative perception, he attracts negativity around himself. He finds evidence of it in the
form of a conversation a man with sufficient self esteem would have forgotten about. He has
never been with a respectful woman as the narrator points out and why should he have been? He
thinks of himself as unworthy of them.
Marya Vasilyevna from the story In the Cart has her own self sabotaging ways. She has
had the same job as a teacher for thirteen years and everything in her life has become routine to
her. She had forgotten about the past as the story states and the only remnant of it is a blurry
photograph of her mother that possibly represents her blurred memory. The narrator states that
she hated the trip and wanted it to be over and in another instance it is stated that she became a
teacher out of necessity rather than any sense of vocation. (129). Evidently she finds little
pleasure in doing things and does not enjoy her job. It is obvious that the only thing she looks
forward to are the exams with the many times the narrator mentions her thinking about them,
even dreaming about them, She had never really thought about a vocation, or the benefits of
learning; it always seemed to her that the most important thing in her job was not pupils but
exams. (129). This suggests a sort of thirst for some type of authority. She feels powerful when
she tests her students. It is the only moment in he life she gets to feel important. Because of the
social environment of the time, women didnt have the options to achieve much social power and
this is evident in this story as she finds Khanov, the man she is attracted to, pitiful. She is

attracted to him, yet she cant see them as equals because of his seeming lack of ambition,
Marya Vasilevna started to feel afraid and sorry for this person who was going into decline for
no apparent reason, and it occurred to her that if she was his wife or his sister, she would devote
her whole life to saving him from ruin (129). She finds it almost disgusting because she doesnt
have the same finances and the same options as a woman. We can see that not much is stopping
her from being happy if she just accepts things as they are and finds happiness in just the fact
that she is alive and well and that she has a stable job of sorts. Yes, there are always
shortcomings to everything but one has to deal with them and look on the bright side of things,
which she doesnt. She is a constant pessimist. When the villagers in the inn say that shes a nice
lady and respect her, this completely goes past her consciousness and the narrator does not
address it. Again, because of her perception of reality she finds evidence to support this reality.
She also does not wonder why they people at work dont particularly like her. Choosing the
ignore the good things in her life, like her memory of her parents or the attractive man who
although not perfect, is not totally terrible, she perceives everything as bad and her life is shaped
exactly in accordance with her perception of it.
The love story in The Lady with the Little Dog can be viewed as a result of the skewed
perceptions of the leading characters. At the surface, the story seems to be one of forbidden love.
The plot is fairly simple, but the usual Chekhovian undertones are certainly present. Gurov has
been a typical rake most of his married life. He does not love his wife as the narrator states that
he considered her none too bright, narrow-minded, graceless, was afraid of her, and disliked
being at home. (361) and he has flings with a series of beautiful women until things get
complicated, according to him. When Gurov and Anna finally sleep together, nothing special
happens in his mind. When she starts crying about having committed a sin, the narrator states,
There was a watermelon on the table in the hotel room. Gurov cut himself a slice. (365). It is
only when she leaves forever that he realizes that this woman was truly different and that he was
madly in love with her. When he finally tracks her down, she admits to the same thing, that she
could hardly forget him. Chekhov, however, leaves us many hints to the contrary. Is their love
truly honest? Or are their perceptions deceiving them. The narrator takes us into Gurovs psyche
when hes pondering about his relationships with the many women, Women had always taken
him other than what he was, and they had loved in him, not himself but a man their imagination
had created, whom they had greedily sought all their lives, and then when they had noticed their
mistake, they had still loved him. (375). Again, how does he know this? How is he so sure that
these women didnt truly love him and were in love with some idealized version of him? Finally
along came Anna who seemingly saw him as who he was. She didnt overtly show that she fell in
love with him because she was worried more about her perception of herself. She ended the
relationship and left town. Also, Gurov realizes that he is losing his hair. He was not the same
womanizer, anymore. Given the seemingly different circumstances, Gurov is very possibly
clinging onto this last relationship because he feels that this woman herself is different from all
the others, rather than the fact that the circumstances are different and that he may not get
another woman of this value again. He spent his life cursing the opposite sex while constantly
trying to attain some sort of happiness from them, a happiness he felt he didnt deserve because
they didnt truly love him. However, he is a desperate man now and he has convinced himself
that he loves this woman. The narrator demonstrates his desperation in the sentence, And only
now, when his head was gray, had he really fallen in love as one ought to - for the first time in his
life. (375). The key words here are as one ought to, Gurov knew his time was running out but
as one ought to, he had to fall in love with this woman. But who is she? Some lady with a dog. In

fact, that is the title of the story. Chekhov presents us with no real evidence that this woman is of
any significance to Gurov. In fact he presents us with the contrary after they make love when he
carelessly eats watermelon as she is weeping. The narrator states that he was bored listening.
Anna herself, although not much is given about her state of mind, is bound by her perceptions.
She sees herself as immoral for having done what she has done. Leaving Gurov, we can assume
that she was tormented by the guilt. The only way to get rid of this guilt was for her to put some
meaning in this short fling with him. Especially when she quite obviously didnt love her
husband. The narrator ends the story with Gurov admitting that the hardest part of their
relationship has just begun. We see that the entire saga of theirs is nothing more than the clash of
two worlds. The events that arose from the two realities as perceived by Anna and Dmitri Gurov
and shaped the rest of their life that we will not be a witness to.