Alternative Ending to The Lady with the Dog - Essay Example

Regardless of how he felt about his wife, he had come to acknowledge that it was his perception that she was dim witted that made his time spent with her special. For no other woman could make him feel as intelligent as she did. Fifteen Years Before Indeed he had fallen hard for Anna. He was willing to forsake everything in his life for a lifetime with her. But that was before the night that he spent talking to his daughter about snow and how it concealed everything that was dark underneath. It made him realize, this was his family.

The call of the flesh may have beckoned to him repeatedly when he sought to seek comfort with Anna all those evenings at the hotel but at the end of the night, he still returned to the unsuspecting embrace of his wife and the wide-eyed and loving welcome of his children. It was this familiar security that he could not bring himself to sacrifice for Anna in the end. The woman he married when he was in his second year of university and the children borne out of that union were far more important to him that the satisfaction of the illicit affair.

In the end, he realized that he would have to help her accept the futility of their situation and return to her husband, no matter how difficult it might be for her. “You must go back to him and try your best to forget about me.” he coaxed her as he cradled her in his arms. Her tears soaking the shoulders of his coat. “But I do not love him Dmitri I never have. Ours was a marriage based upon my need to be taken care of. Not because I love him. I could never feel for him the way I feel for you.

” her voice was shaking as she tried to convince him not to end their affair. “Listen to me Anna. When you first met him, there was surely some spark of attraction between the two of you. You must have truly felt something for him. There was love somewhere within your heart for this man. That is why you married him. You need to find that feeling within you again. Try to remember what you liked and loved about him and hold on to those thoughts. You must stay married to him for we can never be.

” he did his best to let her down gently. He knew from their time in Yalta that Anna was a confused woman. She thought she knew what she wanted but really, all she ever knew was how to be led along by those around her. That was how he led her into this illicit affair that she tried to fight off at first. It never occurred to him that he would be the one to try to call it all off one day. She pushed him away and looked into his eyes as they sat on the divan in her room. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you truly love your wife.

Tell me why you love her and, if you convince me then I shall leave you and never make contact again.” her almost harsh, demanding voice asked him. “You told me in the throes of passion that she was not intelligent and bored you. Your children do not give you any joy because they always ask you questions you feel unprepared to answer. If we go away together we can finally leave all of that behind. We deserve to be happy Dmitri We need to leave our spouses.” He rose from the chair and walked over to the bar.

He stared at himself in the mirror as he nursed his glass of Vodka. It was a ruse on his part to help him buy some time before he had to answer her daring question. He stared into the wine glass as he swirled its contents. “My wife is many things that I do not approve of. She