A man and his mistress are interrupted by the unexpected sound of the doorbell. It’s the man’s wife. A scoundrel and a coward, he leaves it to the mistress to deal with his wife.
The wife claims to be penniless–her husband must be lavishing expensive gifts on the chorus girl. But the girl says no, she has received nothing from him. The wife presses her–and in the end the girl gives up some jewelry to her, even though it didn’t come from the man.
The man himself emerges once the wife has left, and – sniveling wretch! – he finds himself appalled to think of his wife being forced to grovel in front of a cheap showgirl. But rather than lay the blame where it mainly belongs (himself), he takes it out on the girl.
He’s a repellent fellow and it’s a repellent story.
Written in 1886, when Chekhov was dashing off short stories by the dozen to be featured in popular magazines, “The Chorus Girl” is a bit stagey and pat, but it’s tightly constructed and moves along at a rapid clip.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
Though Chekhov was, typical for his time, a chauvinist, he expressed enormous empathy for women in his stories, and often wrote about the ways in which women were, in essence, chattel. “An Upheaval” is about a very different kind of woman than the protagonist of “The Chorus Girl,” but both women are essentially powerless when the men in their lives choose to upend their arrangements, licit or illicit.
A Chekhov Circus 