Three Sisters: Chekhov’s Warning
By: Alison Christy
“Knowledge is of no value,” said Anton Chekhov,“unless you put it into
practice.” The fin de siècle had arrived in Russia, bringing with it sweeping reforms and
rapid industrialization. Chekhov wrote Three Sisters at a time when Russians were forced
to confront modernity. The play is set not in a metropolis, but in the provinces. The three
Prozorov sisters moved there with their father eleven years before and still dream of
returning to Moscow. They long for the Moscow that they left, not for the urban center
that Moscow had become. During their absence, Moscow had been transformed into a
modern city. Industrialization had arrived in the city and brought with it new ideas,
wonder and misery. The sisters never lose sight of their goal of returning, though they do
little to achieve it. Chekhov, a contemporary writer writing for a new theatre, presents the
sisters’ situation to the audience as warning: embrace modernity or forever remain in
stagnation. With this idea, the playwright creates a world wherein time is difficult to
measure, characters are trapped in the past and change, if it occurs, only creates more
conflict.
Moscow was unlike any other Russian city. Though it was no longer the political
capital, it was still considered the cultural capital, the home of the Russian soul (russkaya
dysha). The city was home to the Tretyakov Gallery, a museum strictly for Russian art,
the Bolshoy Theatre and the Moscow Art Theatre. The theatre was founded in 1897 by
Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. At a lively meeting
lasting eighteen hours, the men “rebelled against theatricality, against false
pathos…against the whole system of production, and the contemptible repertoire, in
theatres at that time” (Allen 37). They decided to found a new theatre, one that would be
“committed to the idea that the theatre should reach out to the masses by producing
pieces about contemporary life” (Figes 205). The following year Nevirovich-Danchenko
introduced the work of Anton Chekhov to the theatre.
Chekhov was already a well-known writer. Since his days studying medicine at
Moscow University, Chekhov had made his living writing short stories and publishing
them in daily and weekly newspapers. He had also written the play Ivanov, which was
produced at the Krosh Theatre in Moscow. His next play, The Seagull, opened at the
Aleksandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg to horrible reviews. Stanislavsky agreed with
the critics, and had little initial interest in the play. Nemirovich-Danchenko, however,
convinced Stanislavsky to direct the play.
Chekhov claimed that the production failed because the “actors were acting too
much” (Allen 47). In order to play it successfully, a new approach to acting was needed.
Though Stanislavsky had not yet developed his “system”, The Seagull changed the way
he thought about acting and performance (Allen 50). He decided that it was “wrong to try
to act, to perform” in Chekhov’s plays. Instead, one “must live, exist, following…the
spiritual line of development” (Allen 50). Stanislavsky called this “the line of intuition
and feeling.” He continued to develop this idea and eventually concluded the line, later
called the through-line, must lead to the super-objective. Each character has his own
super-objective, which is present in his every line and action. Each character’s superobjective would somehow tie into the super-objective of the play. NemirovichDanchenko applied this idea to the play itself and called it the seed, that is, the essence of
the play, the unifying subject and the reason for the play’s existence (Thomas 8). This is
different from the concept of theme. The “theme is the play’s response to the seed, what
the play shows about the seed” (Thomas 20). Often the seed of a play can be reduced to a
single word, while the theme requires an explanation.
The seed of Three Sisters is time. Time appears early in the play and is present
throughout. The play begins on the eleventh of May, Irina’s imeniny or name day. Often
it is translated simply as birthday. This is worth noting for two reasons. First, it is a direct
reference which grounds the audience in a specific time of year. Unlike Chekhov’s
previous plays, the time of the play’s setting is not given in the stage directions, but in the
dialogue. Secondly, in 1901 Russia was one of the only European countries which had
not adopted the Georgian calendar. The calendar had been in existence for hundreds of
years and would have been known to an educated man like Chekhov. As the rest of the
world moved forward, Russia was still behind, about two weeks behind. In the rest of the
play, the passage of time must be deduced from the dialogue. The beginning of Act II
refers to carnival. In Acts III and IV time is more elusive and can only be determined by
the growth of Andrey and Natasha’s family. Though it is clear that time passes, it is
difficult to measure.
Individual characters too have difficultly measuring time. When Kulygin, a
provincial school teacher and Masha’s husband, arrives he presents Irina with a gift: a
book he has written. After making quite a show of the presentation, Irina reminds him
that he gave her the same book the year before. He does not remember, nor is he at all
embarrassed when he is reminded; time is ambiguous and unimportant. Later when a
drunk Chebutykin smashes the porcelain clock, it is Kulygin who remarks, “Such an
expensive clock, and you broke it! You get an F-minus in conduct!” (Schmidt 287). The
clock is not seen as an instrument for measuring time, but as an expensive commodity.
Chekhov uses the action of breaking the clock to demonstrate that time no longer matters
to the characters because they do not accept the changes that time brings.
Characters do agree, however, that time brings about little change, at least on a
personal level. In Act II Vershinin and Tuzenbach daydream about life in three hundred
years. Tuzenbach insists that the world will stay the same, that after they are “gone,
people will travel around in flying machines, they’ll wear different-style jackets, maybe
they’ll discover a sixth sense and expand our perceptions, but life won’t change. It will
still be hard…” (Schmidt 282). Like the sisters, Tuzenbach refuses to accept modernity.
He does not believe that scientific advancements will have any effect on human beings.
In his case and that of the sisters, it is their refusal to accept modernity that leads to their
suffering. By their resistance toward them, scientific advancements do have an effect on
their lives.
The characters also resist accepting the present. The play begins with Olga
remarking, “It’s a year ago today that Father died” (259). She continues to detail the day
of their father’s death. She remembers everything from the weather to what Irina was
wearing. Olga and her sisters have fear of forgetting as time moves forward. When
Tuzenbach arrives, he tells the sisters that he knew their mother. Masha replies, “I’m
forgetting what she looked like. The same thing will happen to us. Nobody will
remember us” (267). The sisters see time as a threat to their memory, the sacred place
that holds their memories of Moscow and their parents. The looming threat of forgetting
and being forgotten continues to the end of the play. After Tuzenbach is killed in a duel,
Olga cries, “People will forget all about us, they’ll forget what we looked like and what
our voices sounded like and how many of us there were…” (319). As time passes, it
creates distance between an event and the present and the larger the distance, the more
likely the sisters are to forget.
In contrast to the sisters, Kulygin is very willing to forget. After the solders are
reassigned, they come to say good-bye to the sisters. Masha, married to Kulygin and in
love with Vershinin, breaks down in sobs after Vershinin leaves. Kulygin, having
witnessed the interaction begs Masha, “Let’s start life over again just the way it was
before. I’ll never say a single word about this, never…” (316). He too seems to resist the
present, and only wants to return to the past.
The theme, in this case, is that refusal to accept modernity results in inertia and ennui.
The Prozorov sisters often speak about returning to their beloved Moscow. They desire it
and they have the means and social connections to do it, but they do not do it. The
question is not what is keeping them in the provinces but, rather, what is keeping them
from Moscow. The answer is to be found in the city itself, a place that the sisters left
eleven years before.
Throughout the 19th century, Russian industry was steadily expanding. Moscow
had long been the center for textile production. When heavy industry was introduced in
the latter part of the century, it too was centered in Moscow. Railroads made easy the
transfer of raw material, primarily iron and steel, from the east. The money earned in
these and other endeavors was, as historian Robert W. Thurston says, “proudly Russian”
(14). While there was a higher concentration of capital in St. Petersburg, the money came
from both foreign and domestic sources. The capital in Moscow, however, came
primarily from Russian sources. This money was then used to further fund industry and
railroad construction both within the city and beyond, allowing Moscovian influence to
reach far beyond Moscow proper (14).
Though the economic boom allowed for rapid industrialization and expansion, the
city’s infrastructure was not ready to support such a large influx of workers. Serfdom was
abolished in 1861 largely to accommodate industry’s growing need for workers. Peasants
(former serfs), no longer tied to the land or accountable to their landlords, came to the
city from the countryside in search of work. This happened gradually in the first decades
after emancipation. In the 1890s, the years of the sisters’ absence, heavy industry in
Moscow experienced its most rapid expansion and saw its largest migration of workers.
The city’s existing slums, located on the outskirts, were quickly filled and then, in order
to house the ever-growing population, extended. The living conditions in the slums were,
even by the standards of the day, appalling. In a government survey conducted in 1899,
the inspector observed, “The ceiling is covered with mold, the apartment is cold, there is
a stench from the slop pit” (Thurston 18). Such poor conditions coupled with
overcrowding resulted in disease, particularly tuberculosis, and earned Moscow the title
of Europe’s deadliest metropolis (19).
By 1900, slums were no longer on the outskirts of the city. Late imperial Moscow
was organized into three areas. The first area was the area around the Kremlin, or the
Center. Beyond that was the Second Belt, the fashionable residential area of the city.
Passed the Second Belt was the Third Belt: the outskirts, where the factories and the
slums were situated. When in Moscow, both the Prozorov family and Vershinin lived Old
Basmany Street, located at the edge of the Second Belt. When they lived there, it was a
charming area inhabited by Moscow’s elite. Eleven years later, however, the
overcrowding from the Third Belt had spilled into Second Belt, bringing with the
problems of poverty, crime and disease.
This transition, is unknown, or at least unacknowledged, by the sisters. Chekhov
removes the sisters from the city and places them in the provinces during the city’s most
rapid years of industrialization. When the play begins, the sisters have been in the
provinces for eleven years. They talk about Old Basmany Street as it was eleven years
before. To them, Old Basmany represents home and happiness. It is a symbol of old
Moscow—a time and place where the elite lived their carefree lives blinded to the
industrialization and suffering that was taking place out of sight.
Though Chekhov removes the characters from Moscow, the symbol of modernity,
he creates their lives using some of effects of what could be termed Russia’s progress.
Russian suffered the humiliating loss of the Crimean War due, in part, to the lack of a
reserve army. In the following decades Aleksandr II enacted the Military Statute of 1874.
Conscription became mandatory for all men regardless of their social class or aristocratic
rank. Men were to serve an active term of six years, and remain in the reserves until the
age of 40. While these new measures were beneficial while Russia was at war, they
presented an interesting problem during times of peace.
Vershinin, Chebutykin, Solyony, Fedotik and Rohde are serving within this
system. In 1901, Russia was not at war and men serving in the army functioned as little
more than provincial police officers, and, as seen in Act III, firefighters. After the fire,
Vershinin proudly exclaims, “If it weren’t for the troops, the whole town would have
burned! Terrific, every one of them! Good boys! Just terrific” (296). They were not being
praised for valor in battle, but for extinguishing a fire in the town. Though the
townspeople were grateful for the solders’ actions, this was not the type of service that
they were trained for, nor the purpose of the modern army. At the end of the play, the
men are leaving on their new assignment in Poland. After the Napoleonic Wars, the
eastern part of Poland came under tsarist rule. The soldiers are sent there to do little more
than keep the peace. With great fanfare they leave the Prozorov’s home, as if they were
leaving for battle. There is no glory or progress in this new modern army, only monotony
and boredom.
In addition to military reforms, the effects of educational reforms are present in
the characters. The Russian gentry had been widely educated since the early 18th century.
It was thought necessary that both men and women be literate and be able to freely
converse in one or two additional languages. At the beginning of the 19th century the
Ministry Spiritual Affairs and Education was established by Aleksandr I. Originally
created to limit and regulate education in the country’s schools and universities, it
ultimately did just the opposite. Under Aleksandr II the ministry was renamed the
Ministry of National Enlightenment. After the emancipation of the serfs, the ministry
decried that elementary schools would be open to everyone, including peasants and
women. Local high schools now offered both classical education and practical training.
The education reforms of the 18th and 19th century have affected the sisters’ lives. They
came from a family which is educated, perhaps overly so. The Prozorov siblings were
educated in Moscow “with a vengeance” (269) and are not only literate, but speak several
languages and play instruments as well. Since coming to the provinces, education is
proved both necessary and useless. It is necessary because it provides Masha and Olga
with income. Chekhov never specifically states what they are teaching, but it can be
assumed that it is the basic reading and writing common to provincial schools. The level
to which they teach, however, is far below their own. Olga, Masha and Irina are very
aware of the differences between themselves and the rest of the town. After Andrey
informs Vershinin that they speak French, German and English, Masha asks, “What’s the
point of knowing three languages in a town like this?” Vershinin agrees that “this town is
backward and vulgar” (269).
With this exchange, Chekhov brings to light one of the fundamental questions of
modernity. Clearly the characters are well-educated but their education, other than
providing them a living, does them no good. It does not bring them happiness nor does it
bring them any closer to achieving their goal of returning to Moscow. In this way,
Chekhov echoes Rousseau’s anti-enlightenment idea. Thinkers of the enlightenment
sought knowledge for knowledge’s sake. In his “First Discourse,” Rousseau argued the
enlightenment and knowledge brought about more problems than it solved. Chekhov
illuminated this idea by bringing the Prozorovs to the stage. The family is educated and
enlightened, and yet they are not happy. It is their education and academic training that
teaches them that there is more to life than what is in their little provincial town. As they
have been burden with this knowledge, they can never be happy.
Even with this burden, the sisters, Irina in particular, claim to know the secret of
happiness. “I do know,” she tells Chebutykin, “Man must work, work in the sweat of his
brow. No matter who he is, that’s the whole point of his life” (261). In this statement, she
equates work not with a profession, but with manual labor, something neither the family
nor the soldiers do. It is interesting to note how closely this line echoes the Marxist ideals
which were beginning to take hold in Russia, mainly in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Marx believed that the root of all struggles could be explained in terms of the lower class
(or workers) and the upper or dominate class. Capitalism relied on an endless supply of
workers who would, in turn, be controlled by the few in the bourgeoisies. As a result of
this imbalance, Marx predicted that workers would unite and rise up against the
bourgeoisies. They would establish a new order, one which the workers would control.
They would have the best interests of the worker at heart, not profit. The new order
would create a society where work and the worker was valued over capital.
Marx’s ideas, however, require a capitalist economy. Imperial Russia was only two
generations removed from feudalism and was only just beginning to experience
capitalism. There were lots or peasants, but few workers as compared with other
industrialized countries (Butcher 227). While the situations in Moscow and St. Petersburg
were not ideal, they were not as desperate as other industrialized nations. The solution, as
proposed by the newly-formed Socialist Revolutionary Party, was to bring together the
workers and the peasants who “would lead a revolution and establish a new kind of
socialist utopia that would combine industrial communism with agrarian communalism to
form a unique Russian utopia” (Butcher 227).
Chekhov presents these Marxist ideals by juxtaposing the sisters with Natasha.
Before Natasha joins the family, the sisters live in relative harmony. Each has her role
and they work together to keep the household and the family afloat. None of the sisters is
dominate and they see each other as a source of comfort and support. Early in the play,
the sisters quietly mock Natasha and her clothes. They see her as a simple provincial girl,
clearly not someone as refined as they are. By Act II, Natasha and Andrey have married
and Natasha sees herself as head of the household. She repeatedly asks Olga to give up
her bedroom for the sake of the baby. After the fire, she decides that Anfisa, the family’s
long-faithful servant is no longer useful and must leave. When Olga comes to Anfisa’s
defense Natasha yells, “Don’t you dare argue with me! Don’t you dare” (Schmidt 295).
Natasha now runs the household. Unlike the sisters, she does manual housework. While
she is not the majority, she is the low class worker that has risen to a position of power.
The sisters refuse to accept her new position and this refusal creates conflict in the home.
It is also interesting to note that Three Sisters is Chekhov’s first play which has a
collective protagonist, also called drama of collocation (Sendlick 58). This was not only
dependent on Chekhov’s ability as a writer, but also on Stanislavsky’s ability as a
director. The playwright presents not one protagonist, but three. He also creates a
complex antagonist that cannot be embodied by an actor. The antagonist is modernity,
symbolized by the city of Moscow. The sisters desire to return home to Moscow, to a
Moscow that no longer exists, that has been forever changed by modernity. The sisters’
inability to accept the changes that time brings is what prevents them from achieving
their collective goal.
When Chekhov wrote Three Sisters, he thought he was writing a comedy. He
created a family who embodied all the elements of the enlightenment and placed them in
contemporary Russia. Russia had started to move forward, while the Prozorovs could not.
The sisters often claimed to be “in despair,” but that despair could have been very easily
remedied by a ticket to Moscow. They continually talk about going to Moscow, but for
no obvious reason, they are in a state of stagnation. They are well-off and well-educated
and are very capable or changing their situation, yet they do not. Instead they talk and
philosophize and drown in despair, while the answer to their suffering is quite clear. To
Chekhov, it was a sure recipe for both conflict and comedy. To ensure that the audience
laughs with him, he names the family Prozorov. The name may or may not come from
the Russian word, prozorliby meaning sagacious or shrewd. How amusing to have a
family whose name literally means shrewd to not fully understand their situation or the
changing times.
The company at the Moscow Art Theatre, however, did not agree. Chekhov began
writing Three Sisters in 1900 after the success of both The Seagull (1895) and Uncle
Vanya (1896). It was the first play written to order, that is, for a specific company with
whom Chekhov was well acquainted (Senelick 58). Problems arose at the very first
rehearsal. The company was told by the playwright himself that the new play was to be a
comedy. After reading the play, they were confused: they saw tragedy and hopelessness.
A disappointed Chekhov went to the Black Sea and began his rewrites. When the play
opened the following year, there were mixed reviews: audiences loved the production,
while critics were not impressed.
The theatre, however, declared it a success. Nemirovich-Danchenko remarked,
“All this life, the life shown in this production was filtered through the world view,
feelings, temperament of the author” (Senelick 61). According to NemirovichDanchenko, the production was successful for two reasons. First, the playwright was able
to comment on the world as he saw it. Russian life was changing, and Russians had to
either accept the changes or remain in a state of stagnation. This stagnation would lead to
suffering and ennui which could be allayed if only they accepted the present. Secondly,
Stanislavsky was able to carefully direct actors and unify a production which effectively
communicated Chekhov’s warning to an audience.
One of his techniques was providing the actors with “motifs of concept” (59).
Vsevolod Meyerhold wrote down Stanislavsky’s motifs on the edge of his script: “the
longing for life, the call to work, happiness as a future destiny, work, loneliness, tragic
quality against laughable (background) comedy” (59). These were the ideas that guided
the actors and the director through the rehearsal process.
After seeing the play, Osip Mandelstam cried, “Give the sisters a railway ticket to
Moscow at the end of Act I and the play will be over!” This, of course, is an obvious
reaction to the play. In terms of plot, very little happens. There are moments of conflict
between characters throughout the play, but not tension-building decisive plot. It is
difficult to find the inciting action as this play begins on a day like any other. The
audience has no sense of time, and even the primary event, that is the most important
incident in the background story which sets the plot in motion (Thomas 143), is difficult
to define. It has been argued the primary event is the death of the sisters’ father General
Prozorov. However, the play is not specific on this point. It gives no indication of just
how long the sisters have wanted to return to Moscow. This longing could have started
the day they left Moscow or the day General Prozorov died. Because these basic elements
of the play are elusive, it becomes necessary to look for other meanings.
It must be conceded that Mandelstam is correct. If the sisters were given a train
ticket during Act I, the play would be over. It is precisely the lack of direct action that
demonstrates the theme of the play. The sisters cannot go back to Moscow because doing
so would mean that they have accepted modernity and how it has transformed Moscow
and their lives. The sisters continue to see Moscow as the happy place from their
childhood and not the industrialized urban center that it has become. They affectionately
remember Moscow as one would remember a family member. Throughout the play,
remembering is their most common action. They remember Moscow, their parents, and
each other. The sisters do not understand that constantly remembering prevents them
from moving forward and only keeps them in the past. While they were happy in the past,
the past is not the key to their future happiness. As long as they continue fight the future,
they will never be happy. The sisters’ suffering could end quite easily with a simple
purchase, as Mandelstam said. Yet, Chekhov does not let his audience off so easily. He
continues to present the lives of the sisters for an additional three acts, and never allows
them to accept their situation. The playwright creates this state of stagnation to warn the
audience. Chekhov was an educated man of science, who was writing for a new, modern
and some may argue, avant-garde theatre. He loved his adopted home of Moscow as it
was in the current day. He embraced change and modernity and perhaps only wanted his
fellow countrymen to join him.
(Adapted from a group paper submitted in Fall 2009 for Dr. Zimmerman’s “World
Cinema” course.)
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