Marriage, Affairs, and Human Dogs in the Lady with the Dog - Essay Example

Teacher April Marriage, Affairs, and Human Dogs in The Lady with the Dog People may sometimes see marriage as either a cage or anopportunity for lifelong happiness. Love, however, is not always at the center of all marriages, yet many married couples feel forced to preserve it. When unhappy with their marriages, some people engage in affairs to supplement their married life, and this is what happens to Anna and Gurov in Anton Chekhov’s short story The Lady with the Dog. Anna and Gurov both endure loveless marriages, but they cannot easily break it because they also fear how social disapproval might break them. Chekhov explores the ironies of marriage and affairs in The Lady with the Dog. Marriage and affairs depict relationships between masters and their dogs. In marriage, men feel like dogs to their wives, while wives feel that they are treated as dogs too; through affairs, however, men affirm their masterhood by treating women like dogs. Gurov breaks the patterns of his affairs when he falls in love and changes into a willing and dedicated dog to Anna. In marriage, husbands and wives both feel that they are treated like dogs, while in affairs, men see their lovers as dispensable dogs. Gurov feels emasculated in his marriage because he married a dominating woman, while Anna wedded someone she does not love and who controls her freedom. Gurov marries an intellectual woman who undermines his authority inside the house. He is afraid of her and does not like his home life because he feels like a dog and his wife has the leash. Affairs reverse the relationship between men and women, where the latter predominantly become men’s dogs. Gurov talks about women who crave for love and attention by achieving that through their affairs. They eagerly give themselves to him as if slaves to Gurov’s passions. Gurov, on the contrary, is more attracted to the power he gains in every affair. Power comes from the novelty of each affair and his ability to skillfully handle them. He treats his affairs as novel experiences that include a “light and charming adventure” where “everything is simple and amusing” (Chekhov 569). When these affairs become troublesome, he can easily disconnect himself from these women, a power he can never access in marriage. Everything is different with Anna: he starts friendship with her, knowing that it will result in an affair. He becomes possessed with the idea of a “swift, fleeting love affair” with a woman he knows nothing of (Chekhov 569). Gurov is attracted to the authority he gets from his affairs. He is afraid of his wife and does not like going home. But with his women, he knows how easily they are attracted to him. He has a complete sense of self-awareness that there is something in his appearance, character, and nature that catches women’s attention and interest. When he first meets Anna, he thinks of her as a “girl” (Chekhov 571). This thinking indicates his nature of belittling women so that he can dominate them. His wife has emasculated him through her intelligence and superiority in attitude. Through his affairs, Gurov aims to empower himself. As a result, Anna towards him is initially “pathetic”, like a dog that he can easily conquer and master (Chekhov 571). In the course of Gurov’s affair with Anna, he falls in love with her and, consequently, he changes from a man who treats women as dogs to a woman’s dog. The main difference between being a dog in marriage and this affair is that he is in love with his mistress. He becomes the symbolic dog who is loyal to Anna and cannot be separated from her. He is steadfast to their meetings every day at twelve o’clock. Gurov is also burdened by the secrecy of the affair. Every time he steals passionate kisses from Anna, he fears that someone might see them and their exposure might ruin Anna’s reputation. He cannot enjoy his love for Anna because of this secrecy that seals the life that he wants under a lid. He has changed from loving the secrecy of the affair to loving the source of his affair. In addition, he is like a dog that lavishes his attention and love on Anna. He keeps on telling her how “fascinating” and “beautiful” she is (Chekhov 575). While a dog enjoys licking its master, he craves to kiss Anna over and over and showering her with compliments and attention. Like a dog, he desires nearness to his master. Gurov is not comfortable in moving a “step away from her” (Chekhov 575). His happiness depends on her company; her existence is his existence. Whatever their expedition might be, he views it as a “success,” where sceneries are all “grand and beautiful” (Chekhov 575). Beauty and happiness are in the eyes of the beholder. Gurov finds everything so charming because he has finally fallen in love. At the age of forty, which is twice the age of Anna, Gurov eventually falls madly in love. This is the kind of love of which he has no control, a love that binds him to his mistress like a dog on a leash. This time, however, he enjoys the leash. The leash for him is not a source of imprisonment, but a symbol of his unwavering love for her. Love makes Gurov develop feelings and behavior of being helplessly in love. His object of affection has become “his sorrow and his joy” (Chekhov 580). After Anna leaves him, he believes that, like his other affairs, she will soon become a distant memory. But he is tormented with his love for Anna. The glowing part of his love signifies the fire that burns inside him. He is surprised himself in feeling this kind of warmth, this sense of being alive when his hair is already graying and he looks older every year. He lets the love envelop his life, nevertheless. Indeed, he thinks that Anna haunts him everywhere. His love even romanticizes her physical entity. In his mind, she is “lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was” (Chekhov 577). Everything that he used to enjoy, such as card playing, drinking, and womanizing, has lost its charm to him. He cannot sleep and can barely eat for these are all evident signs of love. He finds his all past interests “worthless and trivial,” which, in essence, he feels that his life has lost its meaning without Anna (Chekhov 578). Gurov is so helplessly in love that he pursues Anna. He has shed his egotistical and empty self and wants only to be with his beloved, whatever it takes. He looks for her in Petersburg, and when he finds her house, he sees the possibility of elopement with a “fence” that people can easily run away from (Chekhov 579). The fence symbolizes something that cannot be taken from within. It stands for the social norms and institutions that will oppose Anna and Gurov’s affair. Gurov gets angry with this fence because it reminds him of the obstacles he will face for being in love with a married woman. He takes chances, nonetheless. A person in love takes risks even to the extent of harming oneself. Gurov is no longer the same narcissistic man. He now cares for Anna because he loves her and not because he loves himself. Anna learns that she cannot love anyone unless she loves herself and Gurov helps her develop self-love. She lacks confidence in herself. She gets married because she hopes to find a better life. This means that she does not believe that she can carve something beautiful on her own. Then she has an affair with Gurov. She is pleased with his attention and affection, but she is not yet satisfied. Her lack of self-esteem haunts their relationship. She always doubts him and feels that he disrespects her and finds her a “common woman” (Chekhov 575). This is obvious from experiences of being always treated as a secondary citizen in society and her marriage. She marries because she wants to be free from her society that traps women with limitations, and yet, the marriage further imprisons her. She realizes that she cannot be free as a married woman, free to love anyone as she pleases either. Anna also does not love Gurov like he loves her, at first, but she appreciates him calling him “kind, exceptional, and lofty” (Chekhov 576). Gurov understands this, and though he pleases his women, “…not one of them had been happy with him” (Chekhov 584). Later on, Anna redeems her self-esteem. She realizes that she is indeed as beautiful and fascinating as Gurov tells her. She takes control of her life by maintaining her affair with Gurov. But she cannot help but feel separated by their individual cages since they are both married already. Finally, she has found someone who will respect and love her including her shame and weaknesses. She realizes that if someone can love her as much as Gurov loves her, then she is someone worthy to be loved. So through their affair, she comes to love herself too. Unfortunately, affairs have slim chances of happiness in a world with clear-cut rules about marriage and affairs. Chekhov stresses that when people conflict with their society, they can hardly win the struggle. They can only hide their happiness and identities “under the cover of secrecy” (Chekhov 583), and that, perhaps, is the only best world that they can have. The story suddenly adds Gurov’s daughter as if to humanize her and to underscore that Gurov is a married family man. If he ever leaves his wife, he will be choosing to leave his children behind too. Chekhov seems to be indicating that affairs cannot be entirely happy even if the lovers are happily in love. They will always be hurting other people, and not just their wives and husbands, but also their children. Chekhov ends his story by hanging because affairs are exactly of the same nature. Anna and Gurov are hanging at the precipice, with no other anchor but each other. And the society is on the other side waiting for them to publicize their love for it will be the signal for the former to push them down the cliff into uncertainty that society will condemn them to. Works Cited Chekhov, Anton. The Lady with the Dog. Trans. Ivy Litvinov. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. Print. Read More