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About The Darling Short Story
About The Darling Short Story
"THE DARLING"
About The Darling Short Story:
"The Darling" is a short story by Anton Chekhov, written in December 1898. First published in The Family
magazine, it was ultimately included in the nine volume of Chekhov's work, released by book publisher
Adolph Marx. The story draws from Chekhov's experiences living in Taganrog, Moscow, and Yalta. The
play's protagonist aroused mixed reactions from Chekhov's contemporaries, though in general "The
Darling" was warmly received by the literary community of Russia of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.
"The Darling" bears some key hallmarks of Chekhov's works. For one, it is a short, humorous story.
Chekhov made his early career writing satirical short stories, and the tendency to approach fiction this
way would never quite leave him. It also concerns the lives of Russian peasants, a subject to which
Chekhov dedicated much of his literary efforts. Importantly, Chekhov had a conflicted view of the
peasant class, often finding their behavior and lifestyles abhorrent, but finding humanity and pathos in
them nonetheless. This tension is central to "The Darling," with its sympathetic portrayal of a series of
largely unlikable characters.
Olenka and Kukin lead a comfortable happy life. Olenka starts to work at the Tivoli, soon adopting all of
Kukin's opinions and becoming preoccupied with the theatre. Kukin eventually leaves to Moscow to
recruit a troupe for his theater, and Olenka anxiously awaits his return. But she receives a telegram that
Kukin has been detained and, shortly after, another one stating that he has died.
While mourning, Olenka meets Vasily Pustovalov, a lumber merchant. It does not take Olenka long to fall
in love with him and promptly marry him. Olenka and Pustovalov live happily together, spending their
time either preoccupied with the lumber business or enjoying a materially-comfortable home life.
Olenka absorbs all of her husband's ideas about business and religion, and becomes totally obsessed
with lumber. On one winter day, Pustovalov goes to the lumber yard too soon after drinking hot tea,
promptly falling ill. After four months of fighting off the sickness, Pustovalov dies, leaving Olenka alone
yet again.
Olenka is much more reclusive after Pustovalov's death, and mourns in solitude for six months. She
slowly builds a rapport with Smirnin, a military veterinary surgeon who is lodging in her house, and can
be seen drinking tea with him as he reads her the news. Like with all the previous men in her life, Olenka
begins to grow fascinated with Smirnin's work and absorbs all manner of his opinions. Yet their
relationship cannot blossom since Smirnin is married to a woman he's estranged from, and together they
have a young son. Soon enough, Smirnin is transferred by the military.
With no man in her life, Olenka sinks into a deep depression and finds herself in an odd predicament.
With no one around her spouting ideas and opinions, she finds that she has none whatsoever. Even
about the smallest objects or the weather, she is totally blank. She finds herself attracting less attention
around town, and only growing more isolated.
One day, Smirnin returns to the town with his wife, who he has reconciled with, and his son, Sasha. He
tells Olenka they need a place to live and Olenka welcomes them to lodge in her house. After some time
Smirnin's wife leaves for Kharkov to live with her sister for good, and Smirnin himself grows occupied
with the town's nightlife and social happenings. Olenka decides to take a more active role in Sasha's
upbringing with the boys' parents having practically abandoned him, and Olenka develops a maternal
relationship with the boy.
In an ironic inversion of her relationship with the other men in her life, Olenka starts to absorb all of
Sasha's opinions and ideas about his school, but this time her obsession resembles that of a doting
mother. Nonetheless, as many small boys do, Sasha starts to feel suffocated by the attention. The story
ends with him crying out a protest against Olenka's closeness and constant attention in his sleep.
Sasha:
Sasha is Smirnin's son. He comes to Olenka's house with his parents, and lives there with them until his
mother leaves and Smirnin proves more or less absent. Olenka begins to care for Sasha as her own,
making him the centre of her life and absorbing all of his opinions about school. Sasha, though, is
somewhat suffocated by the relationship.
Smirnin's wife:
Described as a "thin, pale woman with a crabbed expression," Smirnin's wife is more notable as a
character for her absence. She appears briefly when she, Smirnin, and Sasha come to live in Olenka's
house. Shortly after, she moves away to Kharkov to live with her sister, leaving the family permanently
behind.
Operetta:
A short, humorous opera
Pantomime:
A performance using entirely gestures, lacking any verbal expression.
'Faust Burlesqued':
Faust up to Date, a musical burlesque by Meyer Lutz (1864)
'Orpheus in Hades':
Bryansk:
A city in western Russia
Kharkov:
A city in northeastern Ukraine
Vespers:
Evening prayers
Genuflections:
Kneeling during prayer
Akimbo:
Body position with hands on the hips and elbows bowed outwards
Superfluous:
Excessive, unnecessary
Cracknels:
Hard, crisp biscuits
Entwine:
To interlace
Sardonic:
Cynical or sarcastic
exist through the being of another person. Chekhov warns against this type of woman, who is purely
defined by her male relationships.
Love:
At the beginning of the short story, Chekhov explains that Olenka was "always fond of someone, and
could not exist without loving." Olenka is defined by her love, first for her father, then for her husbands,
and finally for a child that she becomes obsessed with. While this love is strong in the moment, it quickly
transfers. She seems to love her husbands deeply, and embraces every aspect of them, but as each dies
she quickly moves on to the next, immersing herself just as deeply as before. This pattern suggests a kind
of shallowness to Olenka's love and illustrates that perhaps Olenka is more in love with being in love
than with any of the men to whom she attaches herself.
Gendered Roles:
Simply, men in this story are portrayed as opinionated individuals with some purpose, be that as a
theatre owner, an entrepreneurial lumber merchant, a veterinarian trying to make it on his own, or a
young boy working to become a doctor or engineer. Women, on the other hand, are presented in much
vaguer terms. Olenka takes part in whatever the man who is the focus of her life at that moment is
engaged with, but doesn't do much of her own. The other women we encounter fall roughly into some
stereotype: the old woman Olenka drinks tea with, Smirnin's estranged wife who is basically a non-
entity, the various women Olenka encounters at the market, church, or post office. Men are portrayed as
driven, and women, generally, are there as background.
Fate:
There's a strong sense of fate throughout the story, and Chekhov makes sure its effects seem completely
arbitrary. Kukin is thrown in prison after facetiously declaring that he'd rather be thrown in prison than
run his theater. Pustovalov grows ill after spending a cold day in the yard that he and Olenka treasure so
much. Olenka is doomed to always lose the men she grows obsessed with, and in turn to lose her
identity. In each of these cases, the characters' fates seem written on the wall, and the story is propelled
by watching these fates play out.
Religion:
Throughout the story, the characters frequently talk about God's will or pray with one another. Chekhov
seems to be contrasting this belief in God with the aforementioned theme of fate. To paraphrase what
Pustovalov says to Olenka after Kukin’s death, God has a plan and people on earth must simply accept it.
Through this line, Chekhov seems to prod the reader to ask if such bizarre and arbitrary fates really could
be the act of God. As the story progresses, the only real logic that seems to play out is simple human
mortality and change, with God providing little grace, but potentially a whole lot of hardship.
"Olenka, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor, Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her back porch,
lost in thought."
“Narrator”
Explanation:
The opening sentence of the story shows Olenka "lost in thought," and from the start we see Chekhov
building a character whose mind is a mystery. We have no idea what her thoughts are, and such will be
the case for the rest of the story, as Olenka's only discernible thoughts emerge as the thoughts of others.
This sentence also introduces Olenka as someone's daughter, setting up a dynamic where Olenka will
predominately be defined by her relationships to other men.
"Damn my luck in this world and the next! Let the artists have me up! Send me to prison!—to Siberia!
—the scaffold! Ha, ha, ha!"
“Kukin”
Explanation:
During his diatribe about the rain keeping away patrons at his theatre, Kukin facetiously invites all
manner of disaster on himself. Little does he know that later in the story, he indeed will end up thrown in
jail and, soon after, dead. By showing this character receiving the fate that he tempts, Chekhov shows off
his black humor and raises a bit of a metaphysical mystery about a man's destiny.
"It seemed to her that she had been in the timber trade for ages and ages, and that the most
important and necessary thing in life was timber; and there was something intimate and touching to
her in the very sound of words such as 'baulk,' 'post,' 'beam,' 'pole,' 'scantling,' 'batten,' 'lath,' 'plank,'
etc."
“Narrator”
Explanation:
One of the funnier indications of Olenka's tendency to take on the opinions and ideas of a man in her life
comes with this strange infatuation with timber-related vocabulary. Chekhov seems to understand that
without absurd, humorous touches like this, his tale of a peculiar woman's tragic life would otherwise be
unremittingly bleak.
"When Pustovalov went away to buy wood in the Mogilev district, she missed him dreadfully, lay
awake and cried."
“Narrator”
Explanation:
This is the key recurring vignette in "The Darling": Olenka, left without the man she's grown dependent
on, spending her alone time in a state of hopeless despondency. Note how similar Chekhov's portrayal of
her is in this scene when Pustovalov is simply away buying lumber as it is when Pustovalov dies. On a
psychological level, we can understand that Olenka is reliving the drama of when Kukin went to Moscow
and never returned, but on a characterization level, Chekhov uses scenes like this to develop a habitual
action.
"She repeated the veterinary surgeon's words, and was of the same opinion as him about everything."
“Narrator”
Explanation:
By this point in the story—when two of Olenka's husbands have died and she is getting closer to Smirnin,
the veterinarian—we have come to accept that Olenka will attach herself as quickly as she can to
another man, but Chekov makes sure that the dramatic nature of Olenka revising her personality is never
lost on us. It is in fact quite bizarre to watch this woman suddenly sound off on obscure matters that
could only possibly be relevant to a veterinary surgeon.
"She saw the objects about her and understood what she saw, but could not form any opinion about
them, and did not know what to talk about. And how awful it is not to have any opinions!"
“Narrator”
Explanation:
Here, the drama of the story is really revealed. We learn that "The Darling" is not simply a story about a
woman and her many tragic losses, but the story of a woman who is constantly at risk of losing her entire
personhood when she loses a man in her life. Olenka has no opinions or ideas of her own, and we realize
that she is a peculiarly and profoundly empty character, who looks around the room and sees objects
and can't even muster a scant thought about them.
“Sasha”
Explanation:
The confounding final lines of the story are bellowed by young Sasha in his sleep. While they are fairly
cryptic, it's at least somewhat obvious that Sasha is having a dream about Olenka, and that he wishes to
push her away. If this is the case, then perhaps Chekhov is showing us how yet another male figure will
abandon Olenka, this one just a boy. At the same time, Olenka has a maternal relationship with the boy,
and the natural progression of that dynamic leads to the son-figure eventually leaving home. Is it
possible that by finding a male figure who will rightfully leave, Olenka has broken her tragic cycle? Or will
this be yet another unbearable abandonment?
Sashenka (Allegory):
Sasha's appearance in the last part of this story sparks Olenka's maternal instincts, and in turn their
relationship becomes an unusual allegory for the bond between mother and son. After all, Sasha is not
her son, but rather the son of a woman who has basically abandoned him. When Olenka takes to calling
Sasha by the affectionate term Sashenka, Chekhov seems to be showing that the all-consuming maternal
infatuation with the child is the least-strange type of infatuation Olenka has taken up so far, as it's a
common female experience.
taste and his struggle to keep them engaged with his theatre. And much like a man at war, Kukin will
ultimately die on an expedition to wrangle people for his cause.
"She compared herself with the hens, who are awake all night and uneasy when
the cock is not in the hen-house." (Simile)
Here, Chekhov employs the metaphor of the hens to illustrate how unsettled Olenka remains while Kukin
is away. Yet, again in a humorous manner, Chekhov is drawing an uncharitable comparison between
Olenka and a chicken, perhaps suggesting that it's a bit absurd that she goes as crazy as a farm animal
when a man is not around.
"There was the same emptiness in her brain and in her heart as there was in her
yard outside." (Metaphor):
This metaphor does some complex work, both drawing a comparison between Olenka's own emptiness
and that of her yard, as well as bringing back this image of the yard to imbue it with even more meaning.
The yard appears multiple times throughout the story, and its fullness or emptiness always seems to be
an indicator of Olenka's own psychological state.
“Olenka's Mole”
While Chekov only mentions this mole once, it is an important image for two reasons. First, it is one of
the few defining facial features that we know Olenka has, lending her a sense of individuality, if only for a
fleeting moment. Second, it's mention is the last time we get a concrete description of Olenka's face.
When she grows old and mourns later in the story, we only know that her beauty is fading and her face
has grown less attractive, but we never get as good of a glimpse at this fallen Olenka, who has sacrificed
years of her life to a series of men, as we do of the young Olenka with her mole and naivete.
The Window:
Olenka is often shown sitting at a window when she is feeling unsettled. Early in the story, she watches
Kukin return from work and taps on the window to gain his attention. Later, after Pustovalov dies and the
veterinary surgeon leaves, she stares out of her window, forlorn. That she's sitting in her house, staring
out, during these moments suggests that Olenka is trapped and lonely in the domestic space of the
home, with the window acting as a barely visible yet entirely material object that separates this lonely
woman from the world whenever she doesn't have a man to devote her energy to.
The narrative has a straightforward, spare tone. Even the deaths of Olenka’s first and second husbands
are described without emotion on the part of the narrator. However, Olenka's own mood is often
histrionic and emotional, which colors the narrative.
Major Conflict:
Most of the conflict in the story can be read in Olenka’s wandering in her life: from one man to another,
from one point of view to another, from one thought to another.
Climax:
There is no real climax to the story, which works more like a snapshot of life. This feature is very
characteristic of Chekhov’s stories.
Personification:
From time to time we meet personifications in the text: “buildings grew”, “time runs” etc.
There are two key pieces of outdoors imagery in this story: rain and the garden. The story opens with
Olenka looking at the rain clouds absentmindedly, but Kukin is shortly afterward shown complaining
about the rain, apoplectic that this will keep customers away from his theater. Here, the rain becomes a
vehicle for a type of dynamic between two characters that will dominate the story: Olenka observing a
man give his ideas and opinions, which she then absorbs as her own. You can find several examples of
rain and clouds playing similar roles.
If rain and clouds represent an external state of action between characters, then the garden at Olenka's
house shows her internal state. It is flourishing and full of action when Olenka's life is also flourishing and
full of action. But in Olenka's darkest, loneliest moments, the garden is portrayed as grim and desolate.
You can explore those specific scenes and how it helps Chekhov develop Olenka's character.
How are Sasha's lines at the end of the story relevant to both the story itself and Chekhov's overall
style of storytelling?
Sasha's lines at the end of the story, uttered while he is dreaming, don't have a clear meaning as a
conclusion to the story, and this is exactly what makes them so intriguing. There are two major points to
keep in mind when analyzing them. The first is Sasha's appearance as another man in Olenka's life who
she dedicates everything to, with the difference that, unlike the others, he is child. A mother-son
relationship develops between them even though Olenka is not Sasha's mother, and you can explore
Sasha's declaration as his own desire to push this mother figure away, and what implication that has for
Olenka given her history of abandonment.
The other major point to discuss is how this provides an inconclusive end to the story. James Joyce once
said that Chekhov's stories don't have a beginning, middle, and end, instead following the flow of life
itself. You can use this ending to analyze the cyclic structure of the narrative and, in turn, talk about how
these lines suggest that there is much more to this story about Olenka (and the mini-story about Olenka
and Sasha) than "The Darling" covers.
Why does Chekhov use the specific male characters that appear in this story? Compare and contrast
them in terms of their relationship with Olenka.
It would be one kind of story if Olenka kept falling for the same kind of man, but instead, Chekhov
matches her with a series of men who are totally different from one another. On the one hand, they
each represent a different type of person in Russian society: Kukin the artist, Pustovalov the merchant,
Smirnin the military man, and Sasha the student. Through these characters—and their concerns and
tendencies—Chekhov sketches a picture of Russian society at the time and gives little commentaries on
the quality of the people themselves that tend to fill these roles.
Making these characters so different from each other, Chekhov can also develop his themes of identity,
love, and fate. Olenka's identity shifts radically in accordance with each of these types of people, and the
relationship between her need for love and her own personhood is a fraught one that ultimately delivers
the majority of the drama in the story. With a darkly comic touch, Chekhov also shows us that the fate of
all these people, no matter how different they are, is ultimately the same. In one way or another, they all
vanish from Olenka's life.