The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov is considered as one of the pioneering dramatists in the theatre of realism. His play “Three Sisters” which was produced in 1901 is a drama in four acts. It projected the image of a family, a microcosm of society, placing it at the center of the play. The three sisters, their brother, their lovers behave as a group. The play shows their limitations as humans and compels the audience to examine the realities of their lives. Each character of the play is individualized and they bring out various characteristics of human nature in their own way. This drama induces sympathy with criticism, and promotes the most inclusive, truly comic attitudes of human understanding.
Among the group of characters in the
play Andrey’s wife Natasha is considered to be one of the domineering characters.
The three sisters of Andrey think that Natasha does not match for their
brother. Even though her repulsive social climbing, her infidelity to Andrey,
her petty cruelties in the household, her insidious domination over the house
reflect the evilness of Natasha’s character, her narrowness of the spirit makes
her the most satirically comic character in the play. But the audience finds
her vulgarity so familiar that it is laughable. She succeeds in using her child
to assert her will over the house and its people. Natasha sees Anfisa not only
as a mere servant but as one who has outlived her usefulness. She represents
the new ruling class who will adjust the old order of master and serf to the
new order of rich and poor, a more heartless regime.
The
most important symbol associated with Natasha is the lighted candle. When the
fire has been almost put out, Natasha enters Olga’s bedroom with a lighted
candle. Chekhov does not make her speak but it is Mary who remarks that Natasha
walks as if she had set the town on fire herself. But in actuality Natasha had
not set the town on fire but she had set the house of the three sisters on
fire. In the last Act her decision to cut down the avenue of firs shows how the
mistress of the house and garden try to destroy the beauty everywhere. At the
end of the play though she asks a question from a maid, the question is
completely ignored. It reflects that in deep down she feels her inferiority to
the three sisters, and her last scream of rage at the end of the play is her
acknowledgement of the fact that, though she had driven the three sisters out
of their house, they are still her superiors.
One
of the characteristics of Chebutykin is that though he always argues, he is so
preoccupied with himself that he never seems to listen to anyone. In such
occasions he reads his newspaper which is treated by Chekhov as the symbol of
Chebutykin’s crass ignorance. He never reads serious books, or indeed any
books. And being a doctor, he has forgotten all he has ever known about
medicine. His mind has been frittered away and it is through the newspaper that
he fills his vacant mind. He not only reads newspaper, but also puts down
everything that strikes him as important into his notebook. His medical
knowledge has been reduced so far that he takes down some absurd prescription
from a popular newspaper. Another characteristic of this old doctor is that he
has distanced himself from life and living people. Life does not exist for him
but it is only a delusion. In Act III Chebutykin utters that he is “not a human
being at all”. As he reveals he had been a human being once when he was capable
of devoted and selfless love for a woman. In the play his final dehumanization
is symbolically represented in smashing of the porcelain clock which had been
one of the treasured possessions of the woman he loved. And this smashing of
the clock also seems to have aroused bitter memories of his own wasted life.
In
Act IV, Chebutykin is no longer a human being. Though he could have stopped the
duel between Solyony and Tusenbach by telling Irene about it, it does not occur
to him that Tusenbach’s death will also affect Irene. When Irene asks from him
about the quarrel, he answers saying “Nothing. It makes no difference” and
reads a newspaper. When he returns from the duel, he announces the news of
Tusenbach’s death and sits down still in his good humoured mood, reading his
paper and humming a song. Chekhov has reduced Chebutykin’s character to the
state of an idiot to whom nothing matters and who keeps his good humour
irrespective of what calamities may be happening around him.
Thus, the above analysis of Natasha’s and
Chebutykin’s characters reveal Chekhov’s cleverness as a playwright in bringing
out the reality of human nature and his successfulness in stabilizing the
realistic genre of theatre.
