The Lady with the Pet Dog
Joyce Carol Oates
The Lady with the Pet Dog
Joyce Carol Oates
About the Author
Synopsis
Oates’ rendition of “The Lady with the Pet Dog” follows a
woman who is in a similar situation to Chekhov’s similarly
named Anna. Broken into three stages, Oates first
introduces the climax—a scene where Anna is in a panic
after discovering that the man she had had an affair with
was trying to reconnect despite the fact that her husband
was nearby. Feeling faint throughout the concert the two
attended, Anna’s husband attempts to console her, but
through the “clumsiness of his love,” Anna can only think of
the other man. The second segment of the story
elaborates more on the affair that Anna had while away
from home—how the man drove her around and the
intimate conversation along the way, and how Anna’s lover
attempted to woo her, further conflicting her heart. The
final stage of the story elaborates on the whole even. It
details how the two met and everything leading up to the
first episode, and the secret meetings between the two
that followed. The story ends as Anna has a sort of
realization that in a sense, she really was “married” to the
other man who meant more to her than “her own selfpitying sorrow and her own life.”
Terms
Stream-of-consciousness
technique: A technique in which
the author takes a reader inside a
character’s mind to reveal
perceptions, thoughts, and
feelings on a conscious or
unconscious level
Point of view: Refers to who tells
the story and how it is told, most
notably governing whether a
story is told in first- or thirdperson
The Lady with the Pet Dog
Joyce Carol Oates, born in Lockport, New York on June 16,
1938, immersed herself in heavy literature from a young
age. She read works from authors such as William
Faulkner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry David Thoreau, and
Ernest Hemingway, and began writing when she was
fourteen years old. In 1960, Oates graduated from Syracus
University as valedictorian, and in 1963, Oates had her first
novel, With Shuddering Fall, published. She continued
writing, publishing over fifty novels in addition to many
other shorter works, several of which have won or been
nominated for awards.
1
Quotes
“He turned to her and smiled and she felt that she loved him, that everything in her life
had forced her to this moment and that she had no choice about it” (193)
“There was no future. They concentrated on the past” (194)
“[Her husband] talked to her always about his plans, his problems, his business friends
his future. It was obvious that he had a future” (194)
The Lady with the Pet Dog
“Grow old, leave me, die, go back to your neurotic wife and your sad, ordinary children,
she thought, but still her eyes closed gratefully against his skin and she felt how
complete their silence was, how they had come to rest in each other” (196)
“We try to discover in things, endeared to us on that account, the spiritual glamour
which we ourselves have cast upon them; we are disillusioned, and learn that they are in
themselves barren and devoid of charm that they owed, in our minds, to the association
of certain ideas” (199)
“She thought […] of men and how they love freely and eagerly so long as their bodies
are capable of love, love for a woman; and then, as love fades in their bodies, it fades
from their soul and they become immune and immortal and ready to die” (201)
“Everything is repeating itself. Everything is stuck” (201)
“Ah, what despair!—what bitter hatred she felt!—she needed this man for her
salvation, he was all she had to live for, and yet she could not believe in him” (202)
“She would rush home and strike a razor across the inside of her arm and feel that
pressure, that fever” (202)
Discussion Questions (Answer 2 of 5)
2
1. What purpose does Oates’ structure of the story serve? Why does the plot
repeat itself to many times?
2. Do you think Oates’ Anna is an accurate analogue to Chekhov’s Anna? Why or
why not?
3. Analyze the significance of the passage Anna reads on page 199 and how it can
apply to the rest of the story.
4. Why do you think that the narrator’s notions of suicide are so muddled,
focusing on “that pressure, that fever” while “hardly aware of the stubborn
seeping of blood” ?
5. What made the narrator feel that her love with the other man was true while
her relationship with her husband was one where “she lived […] lovelessly”?