Lady with Lapdog
...ality. Gurov felt he was a master at his doing and that this new affair that was just starting would just be a repeat of every other affair. He was used to women who were easy and where just looking to have a good time. Anna was the first woman who seemed so innocent and not anything near to the women he was used to. This intrigued him. In his late forties, unhappy with his life in general, working, associating himself with his playing partners, doing the regular day routine he had gotten so accustomed doing, bore him. “Crazy gambling at cards, gluttony, drunkenness, endless talk about one and the same thing. Business that was of no use to anyone … barren life, a sort of nonsensical existence, and it was impossible to escape from it, you were in a lunatic asylum.” (Chekhov 590). He needed to escape this and somehow find meaning to his life, this he found it to be in Anna though he wouldn’t realize it till later. Anna was an innocent woman who also lived a very unhappy married life. She had gotten married very young and didn’t have the opportunity to experience life as it could have been. She went to Yalta to get away and hopefully find herself and relieve the stress she felt. Once again this was a period where women where looking to marry a man with money and who could give them economic status not for love. “I wanted something better.” (Chekhov 587). She felt she was deceiving herself not her husband because he was a good man yet all she wanted was out of the marriage. “There surely must be a different kind of life … I wanted to live! To live, to live! I was burning with curiosity.” (Chekhov 587). She knew that somewhere out there, there had to be a different type of life filled with happiness and love, that this unhappiness couldn’t just be it. When she met Gurov she thought it felt nice and she started to feel something she never had felt before. But she knew she would have to appreciate it for the time being and soon accept reality and return back to her real unhappy life. This was just a way of life teasing and playing with her feelings. After the affair, one would think that this would be the end to such a wonderful affair and experience they shared. They would both accept their normal lives and hold this as a wonderful memory that would never again in life repeat itself. “We are parting for ever. Yes, it must be so, for we should never have met.” (Chekhov 589). Of course, Gurov took this departure lightly because he had done this so often. He shrugged it off and went back to his normal life with his wife and kids. Little did he know that this time it was different. Memories would haunt him, not letting him move on with his life, making everything he did feel pointless. How could someone his age act this way? He didn’t know what took over him all he knew was that he had to see her. “A lady with a lapdog! Some adventure, I must say! Serves you right!” (Chekhov 592). He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. This was the first time in his life that he was chasing after a woman. Not knowing what Anna would say or think when she saw him he decided to find her anyway. The result was that she too couldn’t stop thinking of him and without them both realizing it they had fallen in love with one another. “It was only now, when his hair was beginning to turn grey, that he had fallen in love properly, in good earnest for the first time in his life.”...