‘I’m so depressed, Sonya, you can’t think how depressed I am.’
(‘Uncle’ Vanya Voynitsky, aged 47, at the end of ‘Uncle Vanya’)

Summary

Vanya Voynitskaya is 47. He lives with his widowed mother Mrs Voynitskaya on the latter’s country estate which he manages full time. Alongside this work he has devoted his life to the service of his sister’s husband, the art scholar and professor Aleksander Serebryakov. Vanya’s sister and the professor had a daughter, Sonya, now in her 20s, who lives with Vanya and his mother on the estate and helps them to run it. She is dutiful and loyal and, as the play makes clear numerous times, ‘plain’ i.e. not beautiful or glamorous, but loyal and hard working.

Vanya’s sister i.e. the professor’s first wife, died young and he has recently remarried a considerably younger woman, Helen, who is young and beautiful.

The professor is retired and he and this young beautiful wife have been staying on the Voynitsky estate because his publications never brought him much money. This has brought to a head Vanya’s simmering feelings of resentment at having worked tooth and nail at the mind-numbing work of managing the estate and, in the evenings, copying out and proofreading the professor’s papers and articles. Now, too late, at the age of 47, he realises it’s all been an absurd and futile waste of time.

As in all the other plays there’s a local doctor, Dr Astrov, who both commentates on the family woes but also gets involved in the farcical love plot. Because central to the plot is mismatched love interests which the characters take as tragic but the audience is free to regard as farcical. Here it is that both Vanya and Dr Astrov are head-over-heels in love with the glamorous young wife, Helen, but she rejects both of them, preferring to be loyal to her wizened and ill old husband; while (sub-plot 2) ‘plain’ Sonya is in love with Dr Astrov, at least in part because he’s the only other man who enters the terribly small, closed, isolated world of the estate.

The first three acts slowly introduce us to the characters and all their mixed and conflicted feelings before the play comes to a climax in the fourth act when Professor Serebryakov announces to the assembled cast his plan to sell the estate and invest the money so as to secure a better return and in order to fund his lifestyle in the city.

Vanya snaps, delivering a long rant about how he’s sacrificed his entire life for the selfish professor who now proposes to sell off his family’s estate and chuck him, his mother and Sonya out on the street. Vanya runs offstage and gets a pistol with which he chases the professor backstage then back onstage, taking potshots at the terrified old man.

But Vanya is a failure in this as in everything else, misses, then throws away the gun and collapses on the floor, sobbing his heart out. Everyone forgives him but the professor, wisely, senses it’s time to terminate his stay and go somewhere else – as does beautiful Helen who, during the previous acts, had been subjected to kisses and embraces by both Dr Astrov and Vanya – so they pack and leave.

Which leaves Mrs Voynitskaya, Vanya and Sonya and their old Nanny, Marina, to resume their quiet, calm, stiflingly dull existence with Vanya shown returning to the mind-numbingly boring chore of doing the estate accounts, Mrs Mrs Voynitskaya reading, Nanny sowing a sock and the hanger-on, Telegin, quietly strumming his guitar in the background.

The play ends with a page-long speech by plain dutiful Sonya, who has had her love for Dr Astrov rejected, declaring that everything will be alright when they die and go to heaven, God will wipe away their tears etc. Meanwhile, they must live lives of faith and hope. It’s open to directors and actors how this is delivered but it seemed to me to be a kind of peak of pitiful self-deception.

Characters and cast

• Aleksandr Serebryakov – retired university professor, who has lived for years in the city on the earnings of his late first wife’s rural estate, managed for him by Vanya and Sonya
• Helena Serebryakova – Serebryakov’s young and beautiful second wife, 27 years old
• Sofia Serebryakova (Sonya) – Serebryakov’s daughter from his first marriage, she is of a marriageable age, but is considered plain
• Maria Voynitskaya – the widow of a privy councillor and mother of Vanya (and of Vanya’s late sister, Serebryakov’s first wife)
• Ivan Voynitsky (‘Uncle Vanya’)  – Maria’s son and Sonya’s uncle, also brother-in-law of Serebryakov, he is the title character of the play and is a disgruntled 47 years old
• Dr Mikhail Astrov – a middle-aged country doctor who is deeply concerned about the destruction of the local forests; he has several lengthy speeches about the impact of destroying the forests on local wildlife which among the earliest discussions of ecological problems in world literature
• Ilya Ilych Telegin, nicknamed “Waffles” for his pockmarked skin – an impoverished landowner, who now lives on the estate as a dependent of the family
• Marina Timofeevna – an old nurse

Act 1

At Professor Serebryakov’s country estate, Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov has grown and his boredom with life as a country doctor. Vanya enters and complains of the disruption caused by the visit of Serebryakov and his wife, Yelena. Serebryakov, Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin return from a walk. Out of earshot of Serebryakov, Vanya calls him “a learned old dried mackerel” and belittles his achievements. Vanya’s mother, Maria Vasilyevna, who idolizes Serebryakov, objects. Vanya also praises Yelena’s beauty, arguing that faithfulness to an old man like Serebryakov is an immoral waste of vitality.

Astrov is forced to depart to attend to a patient, after making a speech on the preservation of the forests, a subject he is passionate about. Vanya declares his love to an exasperated Yelena.

Act 2

Several days later. Before going to bed, Serebryakov complains of pain and old age. Astrov arrives but the professor refuses to see him. After Serebryakov falls asleep, Yelena and Vanya talk. She speaks of the discord in the house, and Vanya speaks of dashed hopes. He feels that he has misspent his youth and he associates his unrequited love for Yelena with the disappointment of his life. Yelena refuses to listen. Vanya believed in Serebryakov’s greatness and was happy to support Serebryakov’s work; he has become disillusioned with the professor and his life feels empty. Astrov returns and the two talk. Sonya chides Vanya for his drinking, and points out that only work is truly fulfilling.

A storm starts and Astrov talks to Sonya about the house’s suffocating atmosphere; he says Serebryakov is difficult, Vanya is a hypochondriac, and Yelena is charming but idle. Sonya begs Astrov to stop drinking, telling him it is unworthy of him. It becomes clear that Sonya is in love with him and that he is unaware of her feelings.

Astrov leaves; Yelena enters and makes peace with Sonya, after mutual antagonism. Yelena reassures Sonya that she had strong feelings for Serebryakov when she married him, though that has proved illusory. Yelena confesses her unhappiness, and Sonya eulogises Astrov. In a happy mood, Sonya goes to ask the professor if Yelena may play the piano. Sonya returns with his negative answer.

Act 3

Vanya, Sonya and Yelena have been called together by Serebryakov. Vanya urges Yelena, once again, to break free. Sonya complains to Yelena that she has loved Astrov for years but he doesn’t notice her. Yelena volunteers to question Astrov and find out if he is in love with Sonya. Sonya is pleased, but wonders whether uncertainty is better than knowledge.

When Yelena asks Astrov about his feelings for Sonya, he says he has none, thinking that Yelena has brought up the subject of love to encourage him to confess his own feelings for her. Astrov kisses Yelena, and Vanya sees them. Upset, Yelena begs Vanya to use his influence to allow her and the professor to leave immediately. Yelena tells Sonya that Astrov doesn’t love her.

Serebryakov proposes to solve the family’s financial problems by selling the estate and investing the proceeds, which will bring in a significantly higher income (and, he hopes, leave enough over to buy a villa for himself and Yelena in Finland).

Angrily, Vanya asks where he, Sonya, and his mother would live, protests that the estate rightly belongs to Sonya, and that Serebryakov has never appreciated his self-sacrifice in managing the property. Vanya begins to rage against the professor, blaming him for his own failures, wildly claiming that, without Serebryakov to hold him back, he could have been a second Schopenhauer or Dostoevsky.

He cries out to his mother, but Maria insists that Vanya listen to the professor. Serebryakov insults Vanya, who storms out. Yelena begs to be taken away, and Sonya pleads with her father on Vanya’s behalf. Serebryakov exits to confront Vanya further. A shot is heard from offstage and Serebryakov returns, chased by Vanya, wielding a pistol. He fires again at the professor, but misses. He throws the gun down in self-disgust.

Act 4

A few hours later, Marina and Telegin discuss the planned departure of Serebryakov and Yelena. Vanya and Astrov enter, Astrov saying that in this district, only he and Vanya were “decent, cultured men” and that years of “narrow-minded life” have made them vulgar. Vanya has stolen a vial of Astrov’s morphine, presumably to commit suicide; Sonya and Astrov beg him to return it, which he eventually does.

Yelena and Serebryakov bid farewell. When Yelena says goodbye to Astrov, she embraces him, and takes one of his pencils as a souvenir. Serebryakov and Vanya make their peace, agreeing all will be as it was before. Once the outsiders have departed, Sonya and Vanya settle accounts, Maria reads a pamphlet, and Marina knits. Vanya complains of the heaviness of his heart, and Sonya, in response, speaks of living, working, and the rewards of the afterlife: “And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress…. You’ve had no joy in your life; but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait…. We shall rest.”

Some observations

The characters give running commentaries on themselves

The characters don’t just talk about their feelings as we all do, they give a running commentary on their feelings, it’s their main topic of conversation. This might be amusing if the feelings in question  weren’t monotonously the same old feelings of boredom, depression and despair. This crystallised for me in the scene where Serebryakov and Vanya have a stand-up shouting match about how the latter had sacrificed his life for the former, all witnessed by the feeble hanger-on Telegin. Telegin says:

TELEGIN: Vanya, my dear chap, don’t talk like this, for heaven’s sake. I’m trembling all over. Why spoil good relations? Please don’t.

Where I realised that nobody in real life would say ‘I’m trembling all over’. Either that’s an odd Russian locution which doesn’t translate very well, or – as I take it – it’s a typical Chekhov character describing how they feel, not in some subtle understated way, but in a tabloid headline way, describing how they’re shaking or (as with other characters) feeling faint or gripped with anguish etc etc. They might as well hold up a placard, as in a Brecht play, with a headline saying UPSET, ANGRY, IN LOVE and so on.

Ronald Hingley’s introduction and the Wikipedia articles about Chekhov’s plays talk about their subtle sub-texts, and I take the point that the plays’ numerous pregnant pauses are designed to let the audience savour the implications of remarks and dialogues between characters, which do sometimes have subtle effects. But, at the same time, the plays contain plenty of these I’m trembling all over type of remarks which are the opposite of subtle. The character might as well hold up a placard saying I’m very upset.

In fact, the characters are continually, obsessively telling everyone else exactly how they feel. Maybe there are ‘subtle subtexts’ at work but they struggle to surface between the characters’ continual tabloid headline exclamations of how they’re feeling.

Shabby gentility

In ‘Uncle Vanya’ we learn why the characters in all Chekhov plays can’t leave their estates, it’s financial. Their estates only give a small annual revenue (2% of the estate’s capital) which is enough to live off in the country but not to support an establishment in town. In other words, they are the poor landed gentry, the petit gentry. Which also explains why their social activities are so stunted.

Russian boredom, English gaiety

Why do all Chekhov’s go round the bend with boredom from living in the Russian countryside, becoming so miserable that they feel like killing themselves and often do, while Jane Austen’s characters living in the English countryside have a whale of a time?

Chekhovian farce

Two aspects of Chekhov’s plays combine to make them feel like Whitehall farces: 1) they way they have eight or so characters knocking around in large houses and 2) the way in each play characters are inappropriately in love i.e. in love with the wrong person. In Vanya I noticed something which crops up in the previous two plays as well, which is the women characters (it’s always women who are petrified of being found in compromising positions) hissing at the man who’s chatting them up and attempting to kiss them, ‘Shh someone might hear you’ or ‘Someone might come in’ or ‘I think someone’s coming’. So number one there’s the paranoia of illicit couples about being caught and then 2) half the time they do get caught, as Vanya walks in on Helen and Dr Astrov having a snog.

They live in big houses (Vanya’s house has 26 rooms!) which are far too big for them and has several consequences. One is to bring out the way the characters are like pygmies living smaller shrunken lives compared to their glorious ancestors who filled and used these house.

It also means the the plays have a strong element of Whitehall farce with characters running in and out of the numerous doors. I’m mentioned the way the female characters, when about to kiss their lovers, are always paranoid about being interrupted by someone coming in and seeing them. And the final scene where Vanya emerges from the door at the back before chasing the professor round the stage is, I think, meant to be tragic but is, at the same time, farcical.

Critique

Critics talk about ‘the emotional turmoil of Chekhov’s characters as they reveal their trauma and deeply complicated feelings’ – but are they ‘deeply complicated’?

Vanya regrets throwing his life away on a worthless academic. He thinks he’s fallen in love with Helen but she understands it’s just a function of his frustration. Similarly, Helen rejects Dr Astrov’s pitch for her, declaring she will stay loyal to her ageing (and probably worthless) husband. Astrov makes his pitch for Helen, is rejected, and barely even notices plain Sonya who loves him so much, riding off back to his house at the end of the play. And Sonya just has to put up with being plain and rejected, probably living the whole of her life unloved and turning into a spinster.

Far from ‘deeply complicated’ these feel to me to be mechanical pieces moving through a clockwork plot which, above all, rotates around FRUSTRATED LOVE, surely the oldest, corniest subject in all literature.

But then there’s no point me not really ‘getting’ Chekhov. He is universally accepted as one of the Greats of European theatre and countless productions, in his native Russia and here in England, have featured the very greatest acting talent who all agree on the scope his characters and plot give for depicting subtleties of feeling and the sense of fleeting emotions changing from moment to moment. I can read that that’s what people say about Chekhov. It just doesn’t come over at all to me, in actually reading the plays.

Credit

Page references are to the 1980 World’s Classic paperback edition of Five Plays by Anton Chekhov, translated by Ronald Hingley.

Related links

• Ivanov in English

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• Chekhov reviews
• Russian reviews