The Characters In Anton Chekhov's Three Years

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s Three Years (1895) was written a decade before the Revolution of 1905—A period of marked lull that preceded the Revolution wherein the intellectuals either harboured a hope for a resurgent Russia or some (like Chekhov) viewed present with a critical eye knowing that dreams of a rosy future need more than just dreaming. This transitory phase had its tremendous impact on the Russian life and character. In the present paper, I am analyzing one of Chekhov’s work Three Years which sets its characters against the milieu of a pre-revolutionary Russia showing how the passage of time not only determines the work of art per se but human relationships as well: My prime focus being the marriage at the heart of the story—that of Yulia and Laptev. Not only serial time but historical time as well finds a deep

The main springs of the actions of the characters are thrown a scarce light upon, incomparably less than what would have been the case in a novel. At the same time the action moves swiftly (as in a drama) while the focus is on the “release of moods and feelings” (Harkins 47). At the centre of the narrative is the marriage of Yulia Sergeyevna with Alexei Fyodorovich Laptev which shapes time as much as it is shaped by it. Laptev’s relationship with Yulia is so skewed by his past that in her presence “he could even feel his unattractiveness on his skin” (Chekhov 5). Albeit, he proposes Yulia only to find that love will be ever missing in his marriage. As time passes on Laptev’s love became “stronger and stronger, and Yulia seemed to him poetic and exalted, but still there was no mutual love, and the essence was that he was buying and she was selling herself” (26). Yulia unlike Olenka of “The Darling” (1899) is incapable of loving for the sake of love. She agrees to Laptev’s proposal while mulling over the nature of marital life sans