On first reading, I found this story utterly mystifying. In some Chekhov stories, the setting, the social dynamics, or the cultural details are so foreign as to cause a modern reader in America, (or, to put it more briefly, me) to shrug helplessly. Subsequent readings, though, were more and more satisfying, although I have to say that the goings-on are rather mystifying no matter how many times you read this tale.
The story: A very poor church sexton and his wife live in a miserable little hut attached to a church in an unspecified but apparently remote and lonely place. The husband is monstrous: When first we meet him, he is lying under a filthy quilt with his coarse red hair sticking out from one end and his “big unwashed feet” sticking out the other. His wife is nothing like her husband: She’s good-looking, curvy, and, most amazingly, her hair is done in a braid that reaches the floor.
Outside, a snowstorm is raging. And along with the sounds of gusting winds, they can occasionally make out the sound of bells ringing – it must be the postman, they think, lost in the snow.
Now comes the part of the story that is difficult to process. The husband accuses the wife of being a witch. The reason for his rage is jealousy: Just the fact that there may be a postman lost in the snow nearby is enough to arouse his suspicions of her. She must be luring strange men to their house!
His wife laughs it off, even as he grows ever more belligerent. It’s an odd standoff, the husband roaring irrationally and the wife almost serene. Why is she not afraid of this brute? What power does she have over him? Given that the title of this story is “The Witch,” you have to wonder, at first, if this is perhaps a horror story of some sort. Does the wife in fact have some kind of eerie powers?
When the postman does actually bang on the door, the story gets even stranger, with the husband at first refusing to acknowledge him, then declaring that, although he may stay in the hut for a moment, he may not fall asleep. And finally, when the postman reckons he must be on his way again, he (the postman) and the wife begin to flirt. When the husband leaves the room, the postman even strokes her on the neck and shoulder. It’s a pretty damn hot scene!
And then the postman proceeds on his rounds, accompanied by the husband to help him find his way again. The husband returns to find his wife lying in bed, miserable and alone. He approaches her, ambivalent. He still thinks she’s a witch; but he also is desirous of her. When he reaches out to stroke her, she bangs him on the nose with her elbow to drive him off. The end!
A few things to note about this story: First, the motif of a lost traveler seeking shelter is one of the most common of all of Chekhov’s narrative tricks. Also typical is the tension between the classes: the postman is a government employee; while the church sexton is little more than a sharecropper. And “The Witch” illustrates the chasm between the classes: The postman is frankly curious about their lives, and unselfconsciously patronizing about them.
Most notably, though, this is a tale of poverty, written at a point in Chekhov’s career that is a sort of fulcrum. Early in Chekhov’s young career, he tended portray peasants cartoonishly. They generally served as plot points, or figures of fun. By 1886 or so, though, he began to create fuller portraits of the rural poor: humans with interior lives.
I’m not sure “The Witch,” written in 1886, fully qualifies at that level. The husband is essentially a pot of boiling, ignorant rage and nothing more. The wife is a blur. Her initial sphynx-like silence, her good humor in the face of anger, her sudden shift to flirtation, and finally her tears and anger… it doesn’t quite add up. As a character she seems indistinct, although I did feel sympathy for her by the story’s end.
This is a spooky, mystifying story with an intriguing woman at the center. What makes her a witch, I suppose, is that she is simply a woman.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
An interesting story to read in conjunction with “The Witch” is another early tale about the interactions of city folk and peasantry, “Overdoing It.” Like “The Witch,” it also features a lost traveler being aided by a poor country dweller. But the direction the story takes is entirely different.
A Chekhov Circus 