Composed in 1885, this a minor–a very minor–tale. It’s the story of a wealthy young woman who, gazing into a mirror in bedroom, daydreams about a life with an imagined husband. But the daydream turns into a nightmare, as her husband falls ill with a fever. She pleads with the doctor to come treat him. Then, horrors, the doctor turns out to be ill as well…
She drops her mirror and the nightmare fades away.
This is the barest wisp of a story.
I couldn’t help but think this is the kind of story you might expect to read in a high school lit mag. “But it turned out to be a dream, a terrible dream!”
Well, Chekhov was a mere 25 when he wrote this. He had only written a handful of maturely, fully imagined stories at this point, and most of them were aimed at making a buck, not art. So a tale like this is probably a sign of him stretching a little, beginning to push beyond mere entertainments.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
Within “The Looking Glass” is a narrative template that Chekhov used over and over: A doctor is dragged from his office or home to attend to a desperately ill patient, and then… You can find this exact setup in “A Doctor’s Visit” and “Enemies,” as well as other stories, and there are variations of it (sometimes off-stage) in tale like “On Official Duty” and “In the Coach-House,” among others.
Setting that aside, the story I might compare this one too is “After the Theater,” in which a young woman fantasizes about various things. But unlike “The Looking Glass,” “After the Theater” has a deeper, more human streak–there’s a point to the daydreams.
A Chekhov Circus 