I read a piece about a Chekhov biographer who supposedly could number, with great confidence, the women Chekhov had slept with. I don’t recall the number but it was large (and Chekhov didn’t have a long life) and, if I remember correctly, the total didn’t include visits to brothels…
“A Misfortune” takes that life experience and applies it — possibly chauvinistically?— to a lawyer’s pursuit of a married woman. If nothing else, it’s kind of an instruction manual for seducing a reluctant woman, a backdated version of “The Game” for 19th Century Russian men with issues.
The story: Sofia Petrovna is being pursued by a lawyer, Ilyin. She is friendly with him but insists that he stop talking about love. She is married, she loves her husband, they can be no more than friends.
But Ilyin is persistent and sly. He uses his rhetorical skills to persuade her that her protestations are insincere. If she really didn’t want him to make love to her, he says, she would have ceased to see him entirely. As it is, he says, she has been leading him on by not cutting him off completely. Why, he points out, would she spend time with him if she didn’t, in her heart, love him?
His argument eats away at her and she comes to see herself as immoral.
Eh…
I find the story “chauvinistic” because Sofia, who at first seems to be intelligent, thoughtful and strong, later is portrayed as pliable and even stupid, so easily is she manipulated by Ilyin. Chekhov often wrote masterfully about women, but at heart he believed them to be inferior to men. At least this was so when he was a young man. Here’s what he said in a letter to his brother in 1883:
“[Woman] is not a thinker… Curious: in all the 30 years they have existed, women medics (excellent medics) haven’t produced a single serious dissertation, which proves that they are schwach [weak] in the creative line.”
I suppose the character of Sofia Petrovna is fairly well-observed; but it seems to come from a wolf’s perspective.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
A great story that is nevertheless undercut by Chekhov’s chauvinism is, of course, his most famous tale of all, “The Lady with the Dog.” These two tales not only both feature men happily preying on women, but also are shaded with a sense of darkness.
A Chekhov Circus 