The Brightness of New Love, Not the Darkness of Morality in The Lady with the Pet Dog - Essay Example

13 February The Brightness of New Love, Not the Darkness of Morality in“The Lady with the Pet Dog” Morality is an old master, intervening in matters as personal as love. In “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” Anton Chekhov depicts a married middle-aged man hopelessly falling in love with his also-married mistress, Anna. Anna abhors their affair, which Gurov initially expects to end as quickly as it started, until he deeply falls in love with her. How can two married people fight for a love that is absolutely against morality? Chekhov uses ambiguity, setting, third-person perspective, and characterization to depict that love is more important than morality because love is more physically and emotionally relevant and profoundly life-changing than morality. Love is more significant than morality because it is superior in its bodily features and effects. Love feels physically raw, while morality is dry. Gurov uses ambiguity to portray the physical aspects of falling in love. It is hot, but windy: “It was sultry indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust round and round, and blew people's hats off” (Chekhov 3). Morality is outside, trying to break into the immorality of Gurov and Anna’s sultry love for each other. Aside from being so physically felt, love gratifies physical needs too. Chekhov uses realism in setting to explore the ability of love to immediately satisfy physical desires. The act of eating a watermelon signifies the physical gratification of love: “There was a water-melon on the table. Gurov cut himself a slice and began eating it without haste” (Chekhov 4). Love is like a watermelon that instantly satisfies thirst. Morality is like the intellectual conversations that Gurov has grown tired of. It is similar to Gurov’s conversations with his friends: “…the continual talk always about the same thing” (Chekhov 7). Morality is boring. Gurov thirsts for adventure and romance and having sexual flings gives him a high. The difference with Anna is that instead of a temporary absorption, he gets a drug fix that constantly lures and excites him. In short, he completely falls in love with her. Furthermore, love changes physical functions. Gurov horribly misses Anna without realizing it at first: “Gurov did not sleep all night…And he had a headache all next day” (Chekhov 7). Love can make people physically ill, which morality cannot do at all for Gurov. Love assaults the physical body, conquering it and making it alive, while morality stands external to these physical sensations, threatening to end their blissful effects. Morality is ancient and cold, while love is current to those in love. Strangers from the past concocted morality, making it irrelevant to modern needs. Realism allows Chekhov to depict that love is always bright and fresh. Gurov cannot escape the passion and dread for his affair, but he continues nonetheless: “…the heat, the smell of the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle, well-dressed, well-fed people, made a new man of him” (Chekhov 5). The setting is filled with activity and motion, and love is exactly like that- living in the brightness of the day- unlike morality that hides and judges in the dark. People in love are real and have pressing needs that morality cannot respond to. Chekhov uses characterization to show stark differences between morality and love. Gurov and Ana are rounded characters because love changes their personalities. Their spouses are static, coldly unchanging like morality. Gurov’s wife remains “unintelligent, narrow, inelegant…” (Chekhov 1), while Anna’s husband is a “flukey” (Chekhov 8). These unchanging characters represent the permanently gloomy nature of morality, which makes it irrelevant to Gurov and Anna’s growing, dazzling love. Love is current because it is open to changes. Chekhov uses a third-person narrator to relate issues of morality from an objective perspective, where both the pros and cons of loving without morality are explored. Morality treats love dispassionately, surgically killing it with its restricted norms and laws. Anna sees herself as “a vulgar contemptible woman whom any one may despise” (Chekhov 4). She knows that society will judge her as immoral, not only because she is married, but because she is a woman. Womanizers fare better, since society brushes them off as just “being a man.” Morality will not consider that Anna and Gurov are not happy with their spouses. What matters to it is that they do the right thing, where the right thing is entrenched in fixed moral norms. Gurov persuades Anna to consider their options. The third-person narrative describes the possibility of their love surviving: “…it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning” (Chekhov 11). This perspective leaves it to readers to judge if their affair is right or wrong. But it hints that they cannot assess these lovers by the obscurity of morality alone, but also by the intensity of their love. Love is a wild dog, while morality is a dispassionate judge. Love turns the old into new. Characterization shows the changes in Gurov most of all. In the beginning, he holds misogynistic views of women. He thinks that they are “the lower race” (Chekhov 1). Later on, he becomes the lower race. The lady with the pet dog has a new pet, Gurov: “He was impatiently passionate, he would not move a step away from her…” (Chekhov 5). He is a new person, or, rather he is a new animal, a dog of his passions. Aside from making new people/animals, love affects how people see themselves and how others see them. Gurov thinks he has deceived Anna: “All the time she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had unintentionally deceived her” (Chekhov 6). He does not believe the possibility that because of love, he has become truly kind and different from other men. At the same time, Anna must see something more than what Gurov shows. Because of her love, Gurov is always better than what he thinks of himself. Morality will not share the same romanticized beliefs. It will only castigate both as sinners, evil in and out. Morality tends to make people feel bad, while love makes people sublimely happy, no matter how enslaved they are. Wherever Anna and Gurov go and whatever they do, they are happy: “…the expedition was always a success, the scenery invariably impressed them as grand and beautiful” (Chekhov 5). The world is all roses because of love. They are happy because they are utterly in love. Morality, on the contrary, makes them anxious. Ann cries, while Gurov searches his mind for the best solution to their moral dilemma. In the end, morality can never stop them. Love empowers and changes lives, while morality strips people of autonomy and happiness. Anna and Gurov used to hate their lives and identities. Chekhov uses ambiguity to describe the disparity between their dreams and realities to differentiate love and morality. Love is, while morality insists on what should be. Love has made them accept who they are and what their lives were and can be: “They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both” (Chekhov 11). Morality wants them to be unhappy apart, but love will keep them happy together. They have decided to love and to accept its consequences. Love is real, raw, and more immediate, and therefore more important than the cold and far dictates of morality. Chekhov’s realist style enables people to examine the opposition between forbidden love and morality. He shows that love changes characters. He gives ambiguous and symbolic meanings to settings, while a third-person perspective opens readers’ minds to the rightness of wrong love. Chekhov asks modern society: Can love influence morality to change itself, in the same way that love has changed those who love? Morality cannot be the sole master forever. It must make way for love, the new master, the greater god. Work Cited Chekhov, Anton. “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” 1972. E-notes. Web. 8 Feb. 2013. Read More