This novella is No. 1 in my completely nonscientific ranking of all of Anton Chekhov’s fiction.
What makes it so great? What places it ahead of all the other stories and novellas that Chekhov produced during his brief life?
Well, let’s look at the story itself for one minute.
The “kingdom” of the title refers to a factory town that is owned and managed by a young woman, Anna Akimovna.
Anna is a child of the working class–her father was a working man–who inherited the factory from a childless uncle. She has some education, but little practical knowledge of business or manufacturing or law, so on her uncle’s death, when she inherits the business and responsibility for it and its 2,000 workers and all their dependents, she is (reasonably enough) overwhelmed by the job and, at times, easily taken advantage of.
The story takes place over the course of 36 hours or so, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and Anna is feeling especially overwhelmed. The holidays are a time to dispense financial gifts to the poor and unfortunate of the town, and to play hostess to staff and advisers–tasks she does not relish.
Every moment of Anna’s days is fraught with tension: She is powerful and rich but inexperienced and somewhat naive. Almost everyone she meets wants something from her. Even her lawyer, Lysevitch, has stolen money from her, and she knows it, but she is so alone in the world that she can’t help but look to him as a confidant and father figure, and even a sort of romantic figure.
While visiting a poor family to give them money, she meets a working man, Pimenov, and is smitten. He speaks to her as an equal, and he is her equal, in a way: They share a working class background.
All through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day she must see to her duties, dispensing charity to beggars, entertaining visitors, listening to the local choir sing at her door, making gifts to her servants–all the while thinking on and off of Pimenov, Pimenov, Pimenov.
At last on Christmas night, after a cavalcade of visitors and fancy meals, she can relax with the only family she really has: her old aunt and various servants. They gather downstairs, in the servants’ quarters, where the food is simple and there is no wine, but vodka and home-made liqueurs.
Anna declares to the old women that she would like to marry, and in a moment of high spirits, she proclaims that she would like to marry Pimenov. And for a moment it seems possible that, yes, she really could just go and marry a man like that.
But then she returns to her bedroom quarters and the realities of the world push in on her again: There is charity to be dispensed, staff to be dealt with, appearances to be maintained. As the story ends she seems resigned to a lonely life as head of the factory town.
All right: What makes this story so, so great?
First, there is the writing: descriptions of lush Christmas meals, dark and fearsome factory buildings, glittering religious processions, homely but comforting servants quarters, and gruesome apartments where the poor live. It’s all there, a whole world–and a world that to a modern reader is strange and fascinating and clear to see. The detail is wondrously fine:
“Seeing Anna Akimovna, all the peasants jumped up from their seats, and from regard for decorum, ceased munching, though their mouths were full. The cook Stepan, in a white cap, with a knife in his hand, came into the room and gave her his greetings; porters in high felt boots came in, and they, too, offered their greetings. The water-carrier peeped in with icicles on his beard, but did not venture to come in.”
By the way, this paragraph is really typical of Chekhov: clear and observant, but not “beautiful” in any mucky literary way.
Another incredible strength of this story is the complex portrait of Anna herself–she is such a tumult of conflicting emotions and desires.
There are any number of memorable women and girls in Chekhov’s stories—and of all sorts, too: His women worked, worried, suffered, pined and cried, but they also connived and stole and committed crimes, even murder. Anna, with her mixture of doubt, certitude, maturity, childishness, kindness, irritation, piety and skepticism, is one of the richest of all Chekhov’s characters.
The third thing that makes “A Woman’s Kingdom” so exceptional is its historical relevancy. Chekhov’s life (1860 – 1904) essentially bridged a period of extraordinary economic growth and social change in Russia. Serfdom was abolished in 1861. That and other social changes led to an industrial revolution that transformed much of Russia. Factory towns sprung up in hundreds, and the rural population shifted from meager field work to factory floors. (They often continued to live in rural villages, even as they worked in factories, as can be seen in other Chekhov tales, such as “Agafya.”) Setting his fiction in factory towns, as he often did, was a way for Chekhov to portray the world as it really was.
Finally, there is the ending: Anna’s mood shifts as she sets aside a hope of marrying a like-minded working man. Will she ever find happiness? Will she have a family of her own? Chekhov doesn’t say; it’s up to us to decide. That sense of melancholy and uncertainty is the mark of Chekhov’s greatest work.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
There are a lot of Chekhov stories that you could read as a pairing with the wonderful “A Woman’s Kingdom.” The most obvious one is “A Doctor’s Visit,” which is mainly an excoriation of factory town life. You could also look to the novella “In the Ravine” for another angle on factory town life. But, for a shorter, not necessarily obvious counterpart, you could read “The Schoolmaster.” Not only is it wonderful in its own right, it shows another side of factory town life in 19th Century Russia–where the local school, like everything else in town, is funded and managed by the factory owners.
A Chekhov Circus 