Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov: Story of a future happiness

According to Anton Chekhov life – “just as it is” – is tragic. The dramatic nature of everyday’s life
needs new theatrical and narrative conventions, which the Russian playwright develops to illustrate
that existence is not populated by heroes and heroines, but by ordinary men and women. Chekhov’s
characters, without undertaking extraordinary actions, rise and fall from a happy state of mind to an
unhappy condition throughout the day.1
Three Sisters is a play written by Chekhov and first performed on the 31st of January 1901, at the
Moscow Art Theatre. The drama takes place inside the Prozorov’s house, where the three sisters
Olga Masha and Irina live with their brother Andrei, his wife Natasha and their two little children.
The beginning of the first act corresponds to the first anniversary of their father’s death, a
Brigadier-general; Olga remembers that it was snowing on the day of his passing away and that she
felt that she wouldn’t survive the grief, while now she cannot understand how time has passed by so
quickly. Irina’s name-day falls on the same date, but the girl does not let the sad memory overcome
her, differently from her sister; she cradles in the recollection of her childhood instead, while she
feels her soul filled with light, thinking about the pleasant emotions that she lived with her mother
when she was still alive.
Since that time, the three sisters have grown up: Olga is the head mistress in a high school, Masha
teaches Latin and is married to a high school teacher, Kulygin, but she is not in love with him
anymore; Irina, the youngest sister, is irritable because of her unemployment. Andrei, who is
described by the young women as the family’s artist, dreams to become a teacher at the University
of Moscow, but he spends all his days working as a member of the city council. His marriage with
Natasha, an unfaithful and avid woman, is turning him into a «psychologically null and void»2
human being, incapable of facing life.
The story starts in springtime, when warmth fills with joy and hope the three sisters’s spirit, and
goes on without any remarkable event until the Baron Tuzenbach, Irina’s fiancé, is killed in a duel
by the hand of captain Solyony, who is also in love with her. In the play the contrast between the
character’s expectations and what is truly awaiting him is finely depicted as is the conflict within
the «laws of life» and the faith in the possibility of a different existence.3 Chekhovian heroes desire
to know, to act, to give their life a meaning; therefore their powerless impulse creates the real
dynamic principle of the drama.4

1
Cfr. Vittorio Strada, Idea di Čechov, in Id. Le veglie della ragione, Einaudi, Torino 1986, p.121.
2
Evel Gasparini, in Id. Scrittori russi, Čechov Marsilio, Padova 1966, p. 613.
3
Cfr. Zinovij Papernyj, Tre sorelle, in Anton Čechov; Antologia critica, Led, Milano 1982, p. 372.
4
Cfr. Carlo Grabher, A. Čechov, Istituto per l’Europa Orientale, Slavia, Roma – Torino 1929, p. 48.
Chekhov is not an inventor, but a critic of daily reality; he is interested in facts, especially those that
can appear insignificant. The plot, that could be interpreted in many ways, does not compose the
outline of the drama, but it realizes a fleeting contour, which is proved to be perpetually
overpowered by a vital anonymous and collective current: «the flow of life».5 It is the mise-en-
scène of an essential tragic, of that surprising which displays constantly in the authentic fact of
living, where the perception of the constant dialogue between human being and fate is clear, along
with the continuing debate between reason and feeling.6
The characters seem to be enraptured by a spell: they do not show any outward reaction when
facing an event; they let themselves be overwhelmed by angst, they suffer and wait tirelessly. Olga,
Masha and Irina continue to hope for what will never happen, chasing a fantasy that could finally
give their lives a meaning: the desire to go back to Moscow, where they were born and spent their
childhood. The hope of leaving echoes in the whole play just as a dream that could never come true,
representing, besides an escape from the family environment, the missing event that gives the
drama a sense of incompleteness; it is the longing for the land that symbolizes the happy world
where the sisters could be saved from their unsatisfactory life without affection. The three families
depicted by Chekhov are linked by something that lacks the essential reciprocity of sentimental
relationships: Andrei Prozorov, knowing about Natasha’s betrayal, carries on living with passivity,
avoiding to take care of his children and show them any kind of affection. His sister Masha is not in
love with her husband anymore, whom once she considered the most intelligent and fascinating
man, while now finds him boring. Colonel Vershinin does not love his wife, an hysterical woman
that keeps trying to poison herself in the attempt of getting her husband’s attention; nevertheless he
is fascinated by the beautiful and engaging Masha, who is twenty years younger than him. These
interrupted relationships, which symbolize the «non-embodiment» of family, combined with the
mechanic handling of the domestic existence and the absence of love, are mutually tied themes
emerging with persistent and disturbing echoes throughout the play.7
In Three Sisters we observe a lack of human contact that matches the protagonists’s hope for a
final understanding; when Andrei talks with Ferapont, the elderly door-keeper of the local council
office, he is looking in vain for a human relationship, while the old man fails to realize his
emotional state and sticks to the odd conversation, answering in an obtuse way. In their talks we
perceive the actual distance between their personalities, along with the unfulfilled desire to share
with one another their own thoughts and their inner turmoil.8

5
Vittorio Strada, Idea di Čechov, in Id. Le veglie della ragione, cit., p. 124.
6
Cfr. Evel Gasparini, in Id. Scrittori russi, Čechov, Marsilio, Padova 1966, p. 599.
7
Cfr. Zinovij Papernyj, Tre sorelle, in Anton Čechov; Antologia critica, cit., pp. 374-377.
8
Cfr. ivi, pp. 398-403.
 The critic A. Kugel’ has noticed that the dialogue in Chekhov’s work tends to become a
monologue: the heroes confess, regret, declare themselves, yet their call does not seem to find any
response in other people’s personality and conscience. There is a perception of the speaker
stretching out his hand to the person listening to him, while trying to express himself by revealing
his most intimate thoughts; still no one grabs it, therefore it remains suspended in the air.9 It is
interesting to recognize the insistence with which the characters attempt to be heard, going on
talking about what they started saying; their speech keeps forming a string over a conversation that
took a completely different direction, because constantly interrupted. In terms of content, the
dialogue is composed by two layers: one is imbued with everyday banality, the other with
metaphysical seriousness, where the first includes and lets the second show through. The dialogue
is not only assembled by words but also by verbal gestures, like the «tara-raboom-deay»: the refrain
of an operetta that doctor Chebutykin repeats in more than one occasion, even cynically after the
death of a patient; the repetition of the motif becomes the phonic signal of his disregard, his
indifferent attitude, also during the tragic moment of Tuzenbach’s death in the duel. 10 The Russian
author creates an atmosphere that envelops his characters as a breeze in which they breath, by the
use of lyrical means such as the tone of voice, the pause and the interruption in which lies the truest
and most intense concept of the drama. Throughout the pauses we almost physically feel the
passage of time which inexorably speeds up, as a result of an enduring inner reflection, a lasting
passion and suffering, that are instilled in every small thing, through which Chekhov’s troubled
world comes to light.
Natasha and Solyony embody the rapacious characters of the play, while the three sisters,
Andrei and the others are symbolically equivalent to myths, defeated by their own intellectual
superiority, still lacking the personal initiative to realize it. The myths live in the past and in the
future, in opposition to the active characters who dwell in the present; therefore, the departure for
Moscow besides representing the symbolic synthesis of this past-future is the leitmotif of the whole
drama.11 The mirage is considered by Chekhov’s heroes merely for what it is: nothing more than an
illusion, yet they desperately invoke it, because it offers them an eternal hope. The artist’s creatures
are not cold thinking intellects; they know life is meaningless, but their feeling cannot be
abandoned to this distressing conclusion, therefore they attempt to hide in self-deception, to
embellish their hateful awareness.12

9
Cfr. ivi, p. 400.
10
Cfr. Sergio Leone, Il grande teatro di Čechov, Quattroventi, Urbino 1991, p. 64.
11
Cfr. Vittorio Strada, Idea di Čechov in id. Le veglie della ragione, cit., pp. 124-126.
12
Cfr. Carlo Grabher, A. Čechov, cit., p. 55.
 A Chekhovian personage tackles the everyday life through his shifting states of mind, his sudden
mood swings; he is the average man: here resides the innovative contribution of Chekhov’s theatre,
his «psychological expedient». The author’s intention is to show what is ordinary about every man,
even about the superior individual; consequently, as much as they try to fight and lift up from their
condition, the heroes are not free from those passions and weaknesses that make average men fall
apart. Chekhov’s «unhappy but ardent seekers»13 feel to a greater extent the narrowness of their
condition, because they are lofty beings: they experience dissatisfaction even when it could be
possible to find reasons of contentment and gratification. Still they are not mediocre figures who
ignore their condition, but they are aware of it, therefore we could define them lofty beings that
remain hopelessly mediocre.14
The author’s progressive ideal is represented by Vershinin’s character, who enjoys
philosophizing about life from his time to two hundred or three hundred years ahead, when
humanity will finally be happy and nowadays sufferings would find a meaning in the history of
mankind. The Russian playwright, especially in his early years, has been influenced by the
progressive and humanitarian theories of his peers; in Three Sisters this future happiness recurs as a
fixed idea, but at the same time abstract and detached. The Baron Tuzenbach is entitled to challenge
this esoteric plea for progress: he asserts that existence will always be the same, there will not be
any sort of improvement, because life will continue to follow its rules; storks will never cease to fly,
oblivious about their small or big thoughts and about philosopher’s will, exactly as they do now.
The most restless of the three sisters, Masha, takes on the responsibility to ask Tuzenbach what
is the meaning of all this; the baron tells her to take a look outside and watch the snowfall: why has
it started to snow in that precise moment? Chekhov asks himself why life is absurd and without
purpose, knowing that he will never find an answer to this question; because it is not a real query,
but rather the emblem of an inquietude of the mind. All things have meaning for and within
themselves, therefore they have one, since that very theme is lacking, which could create a link
between the unlimited events that come and go in the great sea of existence.15 Here we see this life
becoming grey, plane as the steppe; Cebutykin’s character symbolizes this afflicted and hopeless
state of mind: he does not study, he neglects, he drinks, while he feels comforted in repeating to
himself and to others that nothing matters, that everything is the same.16 All the other heroes are
associated with him, as they seem all nearly infected by this virus of detachment and disinterest,
which at the beginning only regards the banality of everyday’s life, but afterwards overwhelms their

13
Ivi, p. 55.
14
Cfr. Evel Gasparini, in Id. Scrittori russi, cit., p. 606.
15
Cfr. Carlo Grabher, A. Čechov, cit., p. 43.
16
Cfr. Evel Gasparini, in Id. Scrittori russi, cit., pp. 624-631.
whole existence, culminating in the moment of Tuzenbach’s death. When in the fourth act Masha is
nervous about the duel between Solyony and the Baron which is about to begin, Cebutykin tries to
console her in his own way: “The Baron is a good man, but one baron more or less – what
difference does it make?”17. De facto for her it is not the same, the woman is highly worried about
what is happening: the duel which is about to start, the small-town mentality of Natasha and the
destiny of Andrei. Masha cannot find any peace in a life without meaning, by not knowing her own
and other people’s purpose.18 Her character is indeed the most intense soul of the drama, real in all
the circumstances that she tackles in the way; there is a fire enduring in her, which will lead her to
fall in love with Vershinin, although it won’t prevent her from remaining still during her lover’s
declaration. At the loving words of the colonel – which are closer to a confession made out loud –
Masha takes distance, moves from one chair to another, chuckles and says she is frightened, while
listening to the advances of a man who is twenty years older, that even so does not offend her, thus
proving her unhappiness. His speech agitates and flatters her; at the same time the woman thinks
about her husband, her brother and Natasha, having a clear perception of the kind of life she is
living. Masha encourages her lover to repeat the words that shock her, until the moment when she
replies it is the same, overwhelmed by the contrail of indifference that lingers in the whole drama.
The truth is that she loves Vershinin too, and does not feel anything for her husband anymore,
whom she married at the age of eighteen. Chekhov recurs to an old theatrical artifice that consists in
giving the public the impression of understanding and knowing the character better than the actors
who play in the scene; therefore we have the illusion of comprehending Masha better than the man
who claims to love her.19
The soul of the real Chekhovian heroes finds itself in a spiritual condition of truly sensitive
ambiguity: they do not love their life because they do not know how to live it; however they would
love life and they regret it. Reason tells them that there is nothing to know, their willpower bends
helpless and their feeling opposes, while making their heart suffer.20 The very subject of the play is
a missing event: the departure for Moscow which never takes place, the absence of love regarding
Olga and Irina, the deception of Andrei who will never be appointed teacher and will never leave
home, the recurring poisoning of Vershinin’s wife which never leads to a real suicide. The only
active heroes in the traditional sense are beings without a soul, displaying a willpower that brings
them to a result: Natasha conquers the whole dominion of Prozorov’s residence and Soyony, from
being a shy and despondent man becomes a murderer by killing the good Baron Tuzenbach.21

17
Anton Čechov, Tre Sorelle, in Capolavori, Einaudi, Torino 2003, p. 197.
18
Anton Čechov, Tre Sorelle, in Capolavori, Einaudi, Torino 2003, p. 197.
19
Cfr. Evel Gasparini, in Id. Scrittori russi, cit., p. 614.
20
Cfr. Carlo Grabher, A. Čechov, cit., p. 48.
21
Cfr. Zinovij Papernyj, Tre sorelle, in Anton Čechov; Antologia critica, cit., p. 378.