Significance of the Place in The Drovers Wife by Lawson and The Lady with the Dog by Chekhov - Literature review Example

Significance of Setting in the Two Stories Student name Course Institution Date Significance of the place in The Drover’s wife The Drover’s wife is a narration of a woman set in an Australian neighborhood who lacks the presence of a husband and the father of her children yet she has to continue facing the hardships and cruelty of life. Her concerns are the safety of the children when the snake appears. In summary, the drover’s wife is having a normal day with her children, ‘mere babies’, and Alligator, her dog. She has not seen her husband for almost six months and tries hard to get by. The peace is then affected by the appearance of a black snake which disappears into the cracks of the kitchen floor and a thunderstorm that starts at midnight. The woman spends the night reflecting on her experiences and dreams as she sewed while waiting for the reappearance of the snake. At the end of the night, the snake reappears. The dog helps in catching the snake and the woman kills it. The eldest son notices the struggles of his mother and swears not to go droving. The protagonist in the narration is the drover’s wife. She is used to staying alone in a lonely place. She can stay up to eighteen months waiting for her husband. She is seen as a woman who has had to survive the unfairness that has life has brought her and acts as a woman as well as the man for her children sakes. She recalls the way she unsuccessfully fought off a flood, fought pleuro-pneumonia which had affected her cows and killed two of them, fought off a bullock sieged her small house and sold its hide for a profit and continuously fights eagles and crows. Occasionally, she had had to ward off men that were planning to take advantage of her loneliness. Her life in the bush has been a tough one that does not allow for sentimentality and strength for survival despite her constant cries and laughs. This is reason why she says that she has to be harsh to her children although she loves them. They should only see the love that is covered in the harshness. She has found humor in her daily life. On that day, she does not rest until the snake is killed in early morning. The setting of the story is the kitchen which the woman runs to after the snake appears. She cannot risk sleeping in the dwelling house where the snake can easily harm her ‘mere babies’. It is set in a bush where there are no people apart from a few travellers who pass by once in a while. There are no neighbors or markets. The area is bushy with the same monotonous pattern of trees and bushes. One can walk for more than twenty miles without meeting another person. The nearest place that is close to civilization is a shanty that is on the main road, nineteen miles from her lonely house. It is a place that is full of loneliness which the drover’s wife is now used to. The house is built of timber, stringy-bark and slabs. The kitchen, her place of refuge from the snake in the house, is bigger than the house but has no floor, just an earthen floor. Its wall of slab also has cracks that allow wind into the kitchen which might blow up the candle. Her main house where the snake hides in has cracks in its slab floor. The place she lives in also has rainfall and floods. On the present day there are thunderstorms. It is therefore set in a rainy region. She relies on candles for lighting because by morning they are over. This shows that the woman was in a, time of no lights. The only mode of transport was train and horses which the wife dreamt to use to travel to the ends of the world. Economically, her husband is a drover who travels with sheep selling them and bringing home the money. She relies on her animals to feed her family when her husband is away. She is also a little educated because she can read the magazine that fulfills her dreams of traveling. We can also conclude that she is not well placed economically but tries because on Sundays she dresses her children very well and takes them for walks. Civilization is far from the neighborhood. One has to walk nineteen miles to get to the point of civilization. She recalls that she gave birth to two of her children in the bush. In one of the instances the husband had to drag a drunken doctor to attend to her and they were late. Clearly, medical access is not possible and the wife uses for alcohol to curb her fever and the pains of childbirth. The greatest setting was the bush which makes the drover’s wife a bush woman. In the Australian community, the bush is associated with men, adventure and risks. In this case, the struggle of the drover’s wife shows that a woman can also face challengers that are presented by the bush. She does this by protecting herself with her Alligator that is wild and enjoys killing snakes. Her main challenge is a snake which is typical of a bush. The setting is in the 19th century Australia where the role of woman was motherhood and restricted to the household matters as they awaited the return of their hardworking husbands. The drover’s wife stands up to handle all challenges presented by the bush which include solitude, emptiness, boredom, sickness, threats from men and snakes, bad weather and motherhood. She has survived the bush through harshness, contentment and a little sentimentality. Significance of the place in The Lady with the dog The short story ‘the lady with the dog’ is a story of love and marriage. Its main characters Anne Sergeevna and Gurov Dmitri are Russians that relates on one thing: loveless marriages. It is set in Russia and is a story of two people that are unhappily married but find love in their relationship. In summary, Anne visits Yalta for leisure where she meets a man who is more than half his age and falls in love with him. Their love cannot be public because each is married. Anne returns to her husband but Dmitri follows her to inform her of his feelings. From that time, Anna visits Dmitri in Yalta every three or four months. In the end, they meet and look for a way of freeing themselves from loveless marriages. At the time, the only option is to meet in secret. The setting in the beginning is Yalta, a coastal region that is full of dust which Anne finds boring until she meets Dmitri. Yalta is a representation of an area of freedom, rest and romance. Anna goes to Yalta to rest from her husband. Dmitri’s reasons for visiting Yalta are not very clear but his interest in women may be a good reason. He is an old man that is always seeking out women to please and seduce. He calls them an inferior race which denotes that he is chauvinistic. He keeps observing women and notices the young refined Anne. With time, he plans how he will talk to her.t Yalta is thus presented as a place where people seek romances and wild meetings. For Anne, Yalta is resting point where she is free from the worries of a loveless marriage. For Dmitri it is an escape from the Moscow where his family and wife live and a place of unfaithfulness as he seeks out woman. Moscow is where Dmitri works and where his family dwells. Its weather is characterized by cold winters, frost and stoves were kept warm. This shows that it may be place of coldness where he felt unhappiness and hopeless. He terms his wife as imposing, narrow minded and graceless. Being in Moscow was not a good thing for Dmitri. He feared his wife and did not like being at home. He had cheated on her because of that. Moscow is a place of imprisonment to a marriage that Dmitri did not enjoy. It was also the place that helped Dmitri to understand how much he needed Anne. It was the point of the birth and growth of love. The discomfort of missing Anne in Moscow gave him the courage to visit her. It is a representation of a point of recalling and reflection on love. After the visit, Anna started coming to Moscow every three to four months. Anne’s home is another setting whose name is only defined as S. It is a civilized city with people that are wealthy and middle class. The wealthiest such as Anne’s husband are well known. This place is a place that Anne opted to escape from. Although she is wealthy and married to a wealthy man, she is unsatisfied. She is in loveless marriage and escapes to Yalta and Moscow time and again to meet her lover in the name of meeting a gynecologist. This denotes that despite the civilization in the area, there were not enough doctors. Anne did not know where her husband works; it is possible that the woman at this point was not totally schooled in the community and was also restricted to family chores and motherhood. This might explain why Dmitri’s wife was reading too much and acting intelligent which made Dmitri unhappy. The setting of the theatre was stuffy and full of bad smell and cigar stubs. There were many crowds moving up and down. There was a lot of confusion as schools and ladies passed by with fur coats. They could see people that had filled the theatre while others while still at the corridors listening in and smoking from the corridors. The confusion at the theater shows the confusion of the lovers. None of them was sure about how things will go between them and this is why Dmitri had opted to travel to the city himself. The situation is not as bleak as Anna promises to visit him in Moscow. The Sea and weather of Yalta becomes the first meeting point of the two lovers. It is place that reflects happiness and ease. As they continue to meet, in Moscow, their love for each other grows to the point of considering what options that the two may have in order to be public about their love. Each of the two lovers forgets their marital responsibilities and families and enjoys time together. However, they are unhappy about meeting in secret. The story is set in Russia in the 19th century. The three towns’ weather is a reflection of the experiences of the two characters. S. is also sad and boring. Anna’s house has a grey fence and is impenetrable. The dogs at the gate attack the beggar who approaches the dog. This show the lovers are unhappy and hopeless as they are unsure if they will meet again. The life in Moscow is cold, frosty and winter. It is a reflection of Dmitri’s life when at home and work. He is unhappy and busy. He cannot however forget Anna. In the last meeting in the story, the lovers are sad and tired of hiding their relationship. On the other hand, Yalta is a hot seaside area which cools down later in the day to create a cooling atmosphere. The lovers are happy at this point because they are together. They meet every day, have meals together and go for walks together. There is warmth and happiness in their hearts. References Chekhov, A. P., & Garnett, C. (1917). The lady with the dog and other stories. Willey Book Company. Lawson, H. (2009). The Drover's Wife. Gruppo editoriale L'Espresso. Read More