A law student, Vassilyev, accompanies two friends as they traipse from brothel to brothel in Moscow. The deeper they trudge into the red light district, the more disturbed he grows, viewing the women first as objects to be pitied, then as demons, then as tragic figures. He imagines various solutions to the problem of prostitution, growing ever more frantic as the night progresses and he and his friends (who are not troubled at all by the events of the evening) grow ever more drunk.
The story is too long, and the longer it goes, the more deeply disturbed Vassilyev becomes, until, returning to his home, he has what I suppose would have been called a nervous collapse. His friends hurry him to see a doctor, who somehow manages to calm the distraught young man.
This is not a good story. The opening sentences are lifeless, and overfull of information, as if Chekhov were working out what it was that he wanted to write about:
“A medical student called Mayer, and a pupil of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture called Rybnikov, went one evening to see their friend Vassilyev, a law student, and suggested that he should go with them to S. Street.”
Whew! That’s a clunker! Why in the world did Chekhov so meticulously spell out the art school name and not the law school or the med school??? Inquiring minds surely would want to know just exactly what med school this Mayer fellow attended, no?
The travels through the red light district drag on too long, although the descriptions of the salons and the details of the business are interesting enough, if not sufficient to justify so many pages.
The final chapter, where the doctor examines Vassilyev, features some of the most wooden dialog Chekhov ever wrote:
“‘Rybnikov and Mayer have spoken to me of your illness already,’ [the doctor] said. ‘Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, I beg…’”
Oof.
It’s might seem odd that Chekhov, who had been a practicing doctor for years by 1889, when this story appeared, writes more believably (and less woodenly) about brothels and prostitutes than he does about physicians and their routines. But it’s not that odd: Chekhov held the practice of medicine in extremely high regard and often couldn’t seem to resist the urge to portray doctors as superior beings. You can see this dynamic in early stories, like the stern and brilliant Toporkov in “Late Blooming Flowers,” and in later works, like the rigorously truthful and moral Mihail Ivanovitch of “The Princess.”
Meanwhile, Chekhov spent no small amount of time with prostitutes–not just as a client but also as a health inspector. Sex workers in Moscow were examined by doctors at least once per week, a medical process that paid decently well. So Chekhov really knew his way around brothels.
While much of this story dragged, and the characters feel like they are being propped up to expound on philosophy and ethics, one thing that “A Nervous Breakdown” does well is express the nervous energy of the city’s red light district – the sense of clatter and bang in a sketchy neighborhood, the boisterous drunks and canny bartenders and hostesses, where life is being lived whether or not it fits anyone’s moral guidelines.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
Truly the best story to pair with “A Nervous Breakdown” is the novella “Ward No. 6.” They’re both deeply flawed works but fairly interesting at least as works of reportage – on brothels for “A Nervous Breakdown” and mental wards in “Ward No. 6.”
A Chekhov Circus 