A portrait of an impulsive young woman, Sofya Lvovna, who has married a dashing playboy many years older than her.
The two Volodyas of the title are Vladimir Nikititch, otherwise known as Colonel Yagitch, Sofya’s 50-something husband, and Vladimir Mihalovitch, her childhood friend and former/lingering crush. (Volodya is a nickname for Vladimir.) Having married Colonel Yagitch, a wealthy, notorious womanizer, Sofya is now looking over her shoulder at the younger Vladimir, a promising but relatively impoverished academic. She is racked with doubt: Has she married for the wrong reasons? Did she do it just to spite the younger man, who never asked her to marry him?
“The Two Volodyas” does not really have much of a story. It follows Sofya and her friends as they drink and party (and rue their drinking and partying the morning after) and careen about in a three-horse sledge, the 19th Century Russian equivalent of a limo. They race off to the country and listen to Gypsy music, like modern day rich kids venturing into poor neighborhoods to hear “cool” music. They drink, they scream, they press their bodies together in the back of the carriage.
In contrast to Sofya Lvovna’s basically miserable, meaningless and indolent life, her adoptive sister Olga has become a nun. Olga’s quiet life of belief and obedience is mysterious, appealing and repulsive to Sofya, all at once. She’s not a believer, so the life of a nun is impossible for her to consider, and yet she can’t help but feel drawn to its certitude and goodness.
The fact is, though, Sofya is impetuous, petulant and selfish. She’s a bit of a brat. And neither of her Volodyas are particularly good fellows. In fact they are very similar, even if the older man has money where the younger does not. No one can be trusted in this group.
One of my favorite parts of this story is the minor character of Rita, an odd, deeply cynical and unattached woman. She speaks in a drawl, smokes constantly and wears a pince-nez. Rita declares, cynically and cruelly, that Olga became a nun “par depít,” out of spite, which echoes Sofya’s own sense of her marriage.
It’s often said that Chekhov did not sit in judgment of his characters. I’m not sure I agree. It seems to me that, in clearly describing Sofya and the two Volodyas and the archly cynical Rita, and basically counterweighting them with the pure and kind Olga, Chekhov is in fact offering up a judgment: Look at these idle rich bastards!
But Sofya, for all her brattiness, is also an object of pity. As a woman, she’s essentially chattel in her world, and so if she swings annoyingly from hysterical laughter to tears, she is exercising what little power she has.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
For another, far different treatment of marriage and infidelity, try “The Party,” which I sometimes think could be the very best Chekhov story of all. Both stories are chock full of detail about the ways the rich live, and both point up men’s prerogatives and women’s relative lack of standing.
A Chekhov Circus 