In both stories the protagonist are stuck in unhappy marriages, but neither actually make an effort to divorce. The setting of Chekhov’s version takes place at the turn of the century, so I feel maybe divorce wasn’t an option for both characters then. Yet Oates had her story take place in the 1970’s, which happened to be a time of feminism, which to my surprise Anna never thought about leaving her husband for her lover. The confusing emotions from an unhappy marriage and guilt drove Anna crazy. She would ponder “this is fate…to be here and not there, to be one person and not another, a certain man’s wife and not the wife of another man” (222). We could tell she just wants to be accepted from someone, and that was her lover. The guilt of cheating even on a broken marriage drove her to tell her lover that she wished that one of her men would die, so it could make things easier on her. In each story we find that the protagonist finds some sort of love in the end of the story. Chekhov’s character Gurov, sees his wife as “limited intelligence, narrow minded and dowdy” (205). Anna seems to be the opposite of his wife, which makes him even more attractive to her. Gurov has been in many affairs, but each time he was left lonely, because he was focused on looking for the sexual aspect of the relationship and not the emotional. Anna allowed him to open up emotionally, giving him someone to talk to. In the end Gurov knew he was growing old and that he truly for the first time actually loved someone. Oates’s Anna, has been through a lot of confusion never knowing who she loved. She almost commits suicide and gives up on her relationship. It takes her sometime, but she finally learns to accept her lover and the secrets. Anna was looking for her own identity and love, but she had to learn to love herself first before she could love anyone else.
With the third person point of view we are limited to so much information, but Oates’s adaption sheds light on the other half of the story. A one sided story would’ve left readers with a lot of questions concerning Anna. It’s like they made the affair seem so easy in Chekhov’s version, but we find out that they struggled just like any couple would. Although the stories shared many similarities they did have their difference in approach.
Works Cited
Chekhov, Anton. “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin;s 2009. 205-16
Oates, Joyce Carol. “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin;s 2009. 219-31
Cited: Chekhov, Anton. “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin;s 2009. 205-16 Oates, Joyce Carol. “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin;s 2009. 219-31