The Lady with the Dog

Gurov’s Change of Attitude Toward Women Before and After Meeting Anna

Anton Chekov’s The Lady with the Dog depicted a love story of Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna; a secret affair of two persons who contradicted each other in many aspects but ended up being together. If it were merely a simple love story like that, the Lady with the Dog wouldn’t have been praised as one of the best short stories in Russia. Indeed, Anton Chekov’s success with the story was that he built up a world where the characters evolved one way or another. Additionally, the author invited the readers to follow every little inner change of the characters. And Gurov, whose attitude toward women was gradually challenged, was the one that captivated the readers the most.

Dmitri Dmitrich Gurov was a forty-year-old banker, who married, and had three children. He represented a new force of the upper class in Russia at the time: wealthy, educated, open-minded, and had a model-like family. Materially, the man was satisfied but not spiritually. The truth was that he didn’t have a happy relationship with his wife – an “imposing” and a “thinker” woman – who he “secretly considered her shallow, narrow-minded, and dowdy” (P.1569) and that he felt inferior to his wife. 

Consequentially, Gurov started to look for other women from whom he could galvanize his dignity and superiority – he was being unfaithful to his wife. Interestingly, by regaining his dignity as a man with high social status, Gurov imposed his superiority on the women he had been in an affair with, the ones he saw as “the lower race”. This attitude toward women was so strong that it became his living guidance. And had not Anna appeared, Gurov would have clung to this attitude forever.

Meeting with Anna Sergeyevna surprisingly deepened the polarization of his feeling toward “the lower race.” Specifically, Gurov belittled and “spoke lightly” of women but at the same time couldn’t live without them (P.1570); He knew how to behave, deal with women, and make them love him, but Gurov himself was also attracted to women (P.1570). He was aware of the consequences of being unfaithful, but Gurov forgot or ignored them when encountering a pretty woman (P.1570); hypocritically bemusing and scoffing at others’ transgression, Gurov, himself, once again, was burned by the fire of possession and desire kindled by the appearance of Anna. Unbeknownst to him, his attitude toward women would change by the destined meeting with Anna.

The more they were together, the distinctive difference Gurov saw in Anna compared to his previous mistresses and even his wife. While Anna was young, coy, “timid,” “inexperience,” and sensitive, his wife and mistresses were “insincere,” “hysterical,” “capricious,” “despotic,” and “brainless.” After their very first intimate touch in Anna’s room, Gurov expected the same reactions from Anna as other mistresses often produced. To his surprise, Anna reacted differently from what he assumed. Instead, Anna felt guilty and shameful for cheating on her husband. What’s more, Anna was angry for deceiving herself and that she had wasted her youth marrying out of curiosity. Watching Anna’s reaction, a half part of Gurov’s rationality told him that Anna was just acting, but the other half was somewhat drawn to the naïve and fragile lady. Naturally, Gurov would not struggle and feel trapped in the relationship with Anna if he could foresee the outcomes and decided to end the affair with her. And before he knew it, a seed of love had sprouted in Garov. 

Gurov was back to his usual life in Moscow not long after seeing Anna off back to her S. town. He spent time with his family. He worked and hung out with friends and colleagues. He thought this was the life he belonged to, and “He had believed that in a month’s time Anna sergeyevna would be nothing but a vague memory”(P.1575) and “she would only occasionally appear to him in dreams, like others before her,” (P.1575)but he was wrong. The figure of Anna “was as clear in his memory”(P.1575) as yesterday. Bewilderedly, Gurov couldn’t forget Anna as he presumed so because the image of a young, naïve, and decent lady of Anna had clung to his mind. Everything he did and everywhere he went; he saw Anna. She also appeared in his dreams, and every little thing may remind him of Anna: his children’s voices, the music box’s sound, the howling sound of the wind; all that relived their time spent together in Yalta. Unconsciously, Gurov had gradually turned from a man who degrades women – the lower race – whose “beauty aroused him nothing but repulsion” (P.1572) into the one who was being obsessed with the one of those “lower race.” Day by day, the memories of Gurov being with Anna filled his mind, weighing heavily inside him and isolating his perception of the outside world that he found the environment around him so tedious, trivial, and meaningless. Finally, being in a state where “He hardly knew himself,” (P.1576) Gurov decided to go to see Anna in S. town. 

Before Anna, Gurov had never lowered himself to reconnect a relationship with his mistresses because he knew it was merely mutual conformity in terms of sexual relief and desired satisfaction. This time, however, Gurov realized that Anna meant a lot more than that to him. “When Gurov’s glance fell on her, his heart seemed to stop, and he knew in a flash that the whole world contained no one nearer and dearer to him, no one more important to his happiness.”(P.1577) He loved Anna “for the first time in his life.”(P.1580) The revelation, on one hand, helped Gurov live truthfully to himself, instead of running away from his true feeling. On the other hand, it changed his perspective of his life and especially the attitude toward women. He felt ashamed and sinful when he realizes that he hurt all of the women whom he had an affair with and “not one of them had ever been happy with him,” (P.1580)and that he is “the lower race” not them.  

To conclude, the most captivating in shaping a character like Gurov was his inner transformation – from a man seeing women as a “lower race” to a person lowering himself and having a true love with one of them. His change of attitude toward women emerged and took form slowly not abruptly, and naturally not purposely; the whole process gave the readers a feeling that it was inevitable and destined to be so.