Reading Journal 2 - Scope of Realism Toward Romanticism 2

World Literature Class (Senior)
Reading "The Lady With The Dog" by Anton Chekhov
Reflective Essay #2
Feb. 26, 2013 (Revised in Feb. 26)

"The Lady With The Dog" - Scope of Realism Toward Romanticism 2

-Debunking Romanticism-

Part. 1 General Overview of Previously Mentioned Concepts

So far, I've talked about Anton's short story, "The Student." In the essay written before this, I've discussed about why his story can be interpreted as Realism writing, though it may share some of the elements that can possibly be found on Romanticism writing: This is because he adventured Romanticism through the scope of Realism. By depicting his romantic protagonist in dry and ascetic manner, Anton revealed his experiment of "decorating Romanticism with Realism". In other words, Anton, in Realism manner, observed a life of Romantic one in his writing "The Student".

Part. 2 Overall Summary of "The Lady With The Dog"

Here, another short story of Anton, "The Lady With The Dog", is presented. The story is about the incident of a man and a woman who unexpectedly find each other attractive in their little vacation in Yalta. Both of them have their own family. However, this does not burden them from meeting each other, at least for the man, Dmitri. The woman, Anna Sergeyavna is more reluctant to accept her emotion of love towards the man: She continuously fights her morals and her past memory of strained life. They are forced to be parted from each other after short vacation, nevertheless their love does not vanish. In Moscow, Dmitri, after failing to ignore his sincere emotion, goes to meet Anna, and dramatically finds each other at the theater performing "Geisha". Like Dmitri, Anna missed Dmitri and confess him that she is in true love with him. And the story ends as Anna tells Dmitri to meet again in Moscow.

Although some found this easier to read than "The Student", I found it somewhat harder to read: Though there aren't much impressive descriptions or stylistic vocabulary presented in the writing, "The Lady With The Dog" required readers to follow its tone and mood until the end. If the thing that mattered in "The Student" was its content, the thing that mattered in "The Lady With The Dog" was rather its tone- how Anton portrays the love between two married ones: adultery.

Part. 3 Adultery

Adultery refers to the voluntary intercourse between a married man and someone other  his or her lawful spouse. As you examine the tone and the style which Anton portrays in the affair between Dmitri and Anna, you can see that he is depicting their romantic affair with Realistic approach. Be careful to not interpret this statement as a devaluation of Anton's work or as I didn't feel any romantic mood in the writing. In fact, I thought that the description that Dmitri provided was really intimate and romantic. Again, it doesn't have to do with the narrator: IT IS a romantic incident, but the point is that Anton tries not to distort this Romanticism: He is carrying on realism in depicting Romanticism.

Part. 4 Realism in "The Lady With The Dog" 

            Q: Why did Anton do so?
           A: To debunk Romanticism!

The remaining question is why Anton wrote like this: What is the purpose of this writing?   Yes, it may be inappropriate to seek the intention of the writing in a Realism piece, because in many cases the purpose within a Realism piece is about the existence and the expression of the writing itself, but still curiosity led me to question why Anton wrote this story.

In this short story, Anton is depicting Romantic situation of adultery. In the writing itself, there seems to be no explicit indications that prohibits or criticizes the action of these two: the adultery. Within the writing, narrator is objectively depicting the beauty within the moment of the adultery. What does this imply? Why did Anton choose the adultery to take place in his writing, and why didn't he add morals or ethics within the adultery?

Soon, I came up to this conclusion that Anton is criticizing Romanticism by debunking its poor aspect: Romanticism writing tends to beautify our life, and it often seems to ignore the righteousness of the action - Romanticism just beautifies our lives no matter what the situation is. From this perspective, I believe Anton carried out a message to debunk this crack within Romanticism. He, I believe, went on to the extreme and found this theme of "adultery" and wrote the Romanticism depiction of the adultery in his writing. Giving warning to not beautify every aspects of our lives, Anton wrote this article to criticize Romanticism in Realism manner.

This interpretation may be inaccurate as we can never for sure know the original intention behind the writer, but as the attempt to find meaning and to engage with the author is a highly-appreciated activity within the field of literature, I believe this interpretation is a sanguinary attempt to interpret Anton's short story, "The Lady With The Dog".