Anton Chekhov

The most blatant call for an alternative is the sisters' recurrent plaint, 'To Moscow, to Moscow!' Almost from the play's premiere, critics wondered what was stopping the Prozorovs from buying a ticket to the big city. Obviously, Moscow is a Holy Grail, envisaged differently by each character. Andrey sees it not only as a university town, but as the site of great restaurants, while for old Ferapont it marks the locale of a legendary pancake-fest. Vershinin gloomily recalls a grim bridge and roaring water there, Solyony has invented a second university for it, and Olga looks back to a funeral. No clear image of Moscow emerges from the medley of impressions, so that it remains some­where over the rainbow, just out of sight.

But because the sisters are fixated on this distant point, commentators and directors have constantly inflated them into heroines. Too frequently, the play is reduced to a conflict between three superwomen and a ravening bitch: the sensitive and high-strung Prozorovs can be no match for the ruthless life-force embodied in Natasha, and so they succumb, albeit preserving their ideals. This common interpretation is not borne out by a close examination of a play, which Chekhov said had four heroines. As the Rumanian critic Jovan Hristic has shrewdly noted, the three of the title are 'true spiritual sisters of Hedda Gabler, who corrupt everything around them by dint of thinking themselves superior'.⁶ The analogy works on several levels, from the military upbringing to the ultimate downfall, engineered partly by an instinctual bourgeoise (Natasha for Thea Elvsted), a second-rate academic (Andrey for Tes- man), and an inept idealist (Vershinin for L0vborg). Like Hedda, the three sisters are at variance with their environ­ment, which represents for them common vulgarity;

Masha's scorn of civilians is bitter. The play chronicles the town's encroachment on their lives, as Olga becomes part of the educational system, Irina a cog in the civil bureauc­racy, Andrey a fixture on the County Council, and Masha in enforced attendance at faculty parties. By the last act, the stage direction informs us that their backyard has become a kind of empty lot, across which the townsfolk tramp when necessary. It is the next step after the fire, when the townsfolk invaded their home and bore off their old clothes. And, of course, Natasha's infiltrations and that of her lover and town's facto head, the unseen Protopopov, began earliest of all.

To protect themselves against this encroachment, the sisters have erected a paling of culture, and within it, they have invited the military. For once, Chekhov does not use outsiders as a disruptive force; for the sisters, the soldiers spell colour, excitement, life. But the factitiousness of this glamour is soon apparent: a peacetime army is a symbol of idleness and pointless expense. Men trained to fight while away their time philosophising and playing the piano, teaching gymnastics and reading the paper, carrying on backstairs love affairs and fighting duels. The sisters have pinned their hopes on a regiment of straw men. It is hard to determine who is the weaker, Vershinin, forecasting future happiness while unable to break with his psychotic wife, or Tusenbach, whose noble sentiments are belied by his unprepossessing appearance and unassertive manner. Chekhov relentlessly moves through the ranks to show Solyony as a vainglorious bully, Chebutykin as an incompe­tent doctor, and Fedotik as a toy-loving child. These are carpet knights, suitable for dressing out a party (like the Captain in The Wedding), but not for salvaging anyone's life. That the sisters should make such a fuss about them reveals at once the irreality of their values.