Of the hundreds of Chekhov stories I have read, this is the one I have thought back on most often, so astounding are the characterizations, so complete the world created by the writer, and so cruel the lives he describes.
The story is complicated, considering how brief it is. The opening pages are presented almost as reportage, in the present tense. We are introduced to Dyudya, a rough man who has set aside a great deal of money through his varied dealings as a tavern-keeper, landlord, trader and inn-keeper. We learn about his two sons–one who lives in the city, where he works in a factory, the other a “hunchback” who drinks and carouses and basically is a good for nothing–and his unhappy daughters-in-law, Sofya and Varvara, who live on the property with Dyudya, essentially enslaved by him.
Into this world enters Matvey, a traveling salesman. After supper, Matvey explains how he came to have an adopted son, Kuzka. In short, he had an affair with his neighbor’s wife, and after the affair was discovered, the neighbor died, possibly of poisoning. His wife was convicted of the crime and then died in prison, leaving the boy an orphan, to be adopted by Matvey.
Matvey is a complicated character. On the one hand, he is deeply ashamed of himself for violating another man’s marriage; on the other, he blames the devil and, to some extent, the wife herself, for his transgressions. Similarly, he is admirable in begging his neighbor’s forgiveness, but he is cold and horrid to the wife, his former lover, who insists she doesn’t love her husband and wants to live with the salesman instead.
Dyudya and his wife and bitter daughters-in-law listen to Matvey’s tale with a mix of emotions. Dyudya is appalled that Kuzka’s mother wished to live in sin with another man. Varvara and Sofya take the woman’s side.
That night, while her drunken husband is off partying, Varvara sneaks off for a bit of fun herself. When she returns, she curls up beside Sofya to go to sleep. But before she nods off, she whispers that they should kill their father-in-law and her good-for-nothing husband.
It’s just an idle fantasy… probably.
The final scene of the story takes place the next morning, and it is again more akin to a piece of reportage. We see Dyuda conducting business, charging Matvey for the night’s stay and bawling at his wife to be sure to charge a “Jewess” who is drawing water from his well. And, in a final scene of cruelty, we observe that, while Matvey may have been kind to adopt Kuzka, he is a mean father with an angry temper.
“Peasant Wives” is incredibly economical. In the space of 20 pages, it manages to sketch out not one but two highly specific worlds – the world of the farm, and the world of the story within the story told by Matvey.
Most remarkable is the way we come to understand the peasant wives, even though the story is not fundamentally about them. Rather, they inhabit the empty spaces in the story–the world is defined around them. Their needs and desires are unimportant; they are bound to their husbands (and their brusque father-in-law) by law, with no more rights than livestock.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
“Agafya” fits alongside “Peasant Wives” like a puzzle piece. In “Peasant Wives,” unhappy Varvara has some fun with the village priest’s son. In “Agafya,” the title character sneaks out for an evening tryst. In both stories, there is a sense of sadness when the morning sun rises and accounts come due.
A Chekhov Circus 