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An interest in women does not exempt men from misogyny.
Dmitri Gurov is a passionate man who prioritizes his love affairs with various women above all else and prefers the company of women to men. He is also a misogynist. Over the course of “The Lady with the Dog,” it becomes abundantly apparent that these two contradictory aspects of Dmitri’s personality exist simultaneously. Dmitri is, first and foremost, a rake or (to use a more contemporary term) a ladies’ man. The narrator informs the reader at the start of the text that he has had a string of love affairs throughout his adult life and that he takes great pleasure in his conquests. His affinity for the opposite sex is so extreme that he is much more comfortable around them than he does around his fellow men. However, in spite of Dmitri’s preferences, he does not consider women to be his equals and repeatedly displays his misogynistic tendencies throughout the story. He disparages his wife for her aging appearance and her intellectual pursuits, he prefers youthful and inexperienced lovers—presumably so that he can exert maximum control over the other party—and he is “bored to death” in the company of the woman who he presumably adores the moment that Anna begins to talk about her own feelings instead of doting on him. The most revealing example occurs towards the start of the story when Dmitri refers to women as the “lower race.” Dmitri may believe that men are the superior gender but the narrator cheekily notes that Dmitri “could not have existed a single day” without the members of this so-called “lower race.” As a result, Dmitri’s misogynistic tendencies represent the paradox that emerges when men depend on women while simultaneously viewing them as inferior.
Our private selves can differ from our public selves.
“The Lady with the Dog” is about an affair. Specifically, it is about an affair between two people who are already married. As a result, every moment in the text is shrouded in secrecy and deception. Not surprisingly, the secretive nature of Anna and Dmitri’s affair causes Dmitri to contemplate both his private and his public self. He sees himself as a man who lives a “double life” because he has effectively been split into two: the Public Dmitri who is a family man with a wife, three children, and a job at a bank and the Private Dmitri who is in love with Anna. Dmitri is fixated on this notion of public vs. private selves because he cannot shake the irony that he is forced to masquerade his “false” self before the general public while his true self must be hidden from prying eyes in clandestine hotel rooms. He is so unnerved by his own lack of authenticity that he becomes increasingly paranoid until he becomes convinced that life “revolves around mystery” and that every person he meets is concealing the most genuine and interesting things about themselves. Dmitri’s anxiety about the falsities of human nature climbs to such an extreme that he “no longer believ[es] what he [sees].” This response is clearly a manifestation of Dmitri’s guilty conscience. However, Chekhov comments on peoples’ rich inner lives and the disconnect between our public and private selves through Dmitri’s anxieties.
Morality is subjective.
“The Lady with the Dog” is initially presented to the reader as a fairly straightforward contemplation of ethics. Almost immediately, the reader is able to determine that this story is about an extramarital affair. The reader, then, logically assumes that the text is going to follow the conventions of love-affair fiction in which the reader is meant to pity the couple for their forbidden love while simultaneously acknowledging that what they are doing is morally dubious. However, as the story progresses, Chekhov subverts such conventions. It may manifest in different ways, but Anna and Dmitri are both initially ashamed of their affair. Anna is consumed with guilt. She anxiously scans the steamer for the arrival of her husband and she frequently asks Dmitri how he could possibly respect her after what they have done. Dmitri is the least concerned of the pair but even he is keen to keep their relationship a secret, as evidenced by the paranoid way that he glances over his shoulder after he kisses Anna in public. However, as the text progresses, Dmitri begins to regard their love as something that is “sincere,” “important,” and “essential” as opposed to something shameful that should be kept out of sight. Even Anna, who was so overwhelmed by their transgressions that she initially spoke of their parting with relief, has a change of heart and repeatedly lies to her husband so that she can travel to Moscow to be with the man she loves. Through Anna and Dmitri’s shifting ideologies, Chekhov comments on the subjective nature of morality.
