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Chapter 1

Introduction

This paper looks into Anton Chekhov’s famous play The Cherry Orchard from a

socio-political point of view. At the same time this paper works on the theme of love in this

play. Love comes with different dimensions in The Cherry Orchard. In this play we can see

love between human beings and nature which refers to the love cherished by the characters of

the play for the cherry trees. Besides, love within human beings for each other is another

angle of this play. We find Ranyevskaya, the protagonist of the play, having immense love

for her son and husband who are dead. At the same time Ranyevskaya loves her daughter

Anya who is still alive.

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov centers round the lives of a group aristocratic

Russian in the wake of the Liberation of the serfs. In the Cherry Orchard estate the neighbors,

friends and servants are making a grand preparation for the arrival of Madame Ranevskaya

and daughter Anya. Ranaevskaya is the owner of the Cherry Orchard estate .She has left the

estate five years ago when her husband died and had gone to Paris to stay abusive lover,who

now has abandoned her.

In this paper I want to show The Cherry Orchard abounds in love. There are love

triangles .There is unrequited love. There’s physical love. There’s spiritual love. Love

between master and servant. There’s even even requited love. Chekhov just couldn't write a

play about human beings without showing them in love of all kinds and making decisions,

good and bad, inspired by love.

During her stay in France, Madame Ranevskaya has fallen into the huge debt. At the

party all the major characters are introduced. Lopakin is the born serfs but he has struggled
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hard to make a successful life. Firs is another serf who has maintained the same post even

after the liberation .Many subplots are introduced in the scene of party a romance between the

tutor Trofimov and Anya, another hopeful romance between her sister Barbara and wealthy

Lopakhin, a love triangle between the servant's Dunysha,Yasha,and Yepikhodov, the class

struggles of Lopakhin and Firs, the isolation of Charlotte.

Ranyevskaya recalls the romantic relationship she had with her husband who is no

more. It hurts Ranyevskaya to think that her husband is dead. Ranyevskaya is heartbroken for

another reason. That is the premature death of her son. Another spectacle of love that appears

in The Cherry Orchard is Ranyevskaya’s love for the cherry trees which are about to be

chopped down.

The play has the theme of love and romance. We know that different characters fall in

love with one another. Being a widow, Lady Ranevskaya was living in Paris with man whom

she seems to be in love. But their love turns only as a romance. We also know that Lopakhin

falls in love with Varya, adopted daughter of Lady Ranevskaya, but due to the business

approach, the love between them does not end in marriage. He is half -hearted man. Perhaps

he does not want to marry anyone who is aristocracy only in name. Similarly, Yasha and

Dunyasha are not brought together by the end of the play. Anya and Trofimov also face same

destiny of not having love/marriage: None of the relationship ends with marriage. So the play

carries the theme of unsuccessful love affairs. All the people who are in love affairs belong to

Ranevskaya's family in some sense. As the family suffers from economic crisis and downfall,

the relations among the lovers also suffer. Perhaps, the playwright wants to show that

economic status is to be strengthened in order to success in social and human relationship.

Another character in The Cherry Orchard is Firs. Firs are an old man of eighty years

who has been looking after the cherry trees since his childhood. He greatly loves the cherry
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trees. His entire being is closely bonded with the existence of the cherry trees. For this reason

when at the end of the play the cherry trees are being cut down, we find Firs falling down on

the floor and shaking to death. It clearly shows the love of Firs for the cherry orchard and the

trauma he suffers when the cherry trees are destroyed. This is how a strong theme of love

prevails throughout The Cherry Orchard.

The Cherry Orchard portrays the socio-economic and socio-individual phenomena

that prevailed in Russia during the late 19th century while industrialization was fast expanding

across Russian towns and countryside as a result of which environmental resources came

under the threat of termination and endangerment.

Before the Industrial Revolution most of the people in Russia were dependent on

agriculture whereas after the Industrial Revolution a lot of people moved from rural areas to

big cities. For this reason people who left villages found it unnecessary to retain their

ancestral farmlands. Most of such people sold their agricultural lands for money. In this way

many landlords lost their pomp and influence while people who succeeded to build up

industries started making money faster. In this way a massive socio-economic change

engulfed Russia which is illustriously sketched by Anton Chekov in The Cherry Orchard.

In broad terms, this play depicts how expansion of industries in Russia and in other

parts of Europe gradually obliterated orchards, forests and farmlands to build up factories. In

terms of the plot and characterization of the play, it was a pathetic experience for some

families in Russia to sell out their ancestral landscapes to industrialists and the destruction of

the cherry trees at the end of the play movingly sketches the agony it causes to the characters

who had owned the cherry estate for several decades.

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The leading characters of the play seem to have developed a profound and passionate

attachment with the cherry trees and they undergo a severe psychological trauma while these

trees are about to be chopped down.

In this way, this play underscores the inherent bonds between environmental entities

and human beings and it also depicts the social realignment of Russia from an agrarian

country to the posture of an industrialized state and the consequences of this transition.

The cherry trees symbolize the social and personal value the concerned characters add

to heritage and sanctity while giving away the cherry grove shows their compromise with the

mechanization of life. Industrial Revolution totally reversed the social, economic and

political patterns of entire Europe including Russia. The Cherry Orchard is one of the most

monumental works that furnishes this glaring message to readers and viewers.
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Chapter 2

Social Changes in Russia depicted in The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard is one of the best-known plays by Anton Chekhov. This play

was staged in Russia for the first time in 1903, one year before Anton Chekhov died. This

play is still esteemed as a timeless literary work for vividly representing the impact of

Industrial Revolution had on the mindsets of Russian people as well as on the social, political

and environmental physiognomies of Russia during the late 19 th century.

It depicts a small Russian town where a lady named Ranyevskaya is found coming

back from Paris in order to sell their orchestral cherry grove. Ranyevskaya had left Russia for

France following the tragic and premature deaths of her husband and son. She is actually on a

pursuit to keep away from traumatic memories from her past. The remembrances of her dead

son and husband keep on haunting her all the time.

Therefore, she decides to move away from her Russian hometown to dive into a

deliberate oblivion but painful memories are too tenacious to be shaken off. The cherry trees,

the household in which she used to live bear glaring shadows from her past and all along

keep her in a state of pathos. Her efforts to sell out the cherry estate don’t have any monetary

aim; rather she intends to break off all her ties with her bygone days.

She was victimized by misfortune through the untimely deaths of her husband and son

while the cherry trees would fall a prey to the deforestation caused by the monstrous advent

of industrial enhancement in Russia.

This play makes intensive references to the socio-economic metamorphosis of Russia

as a result of which the livelihood of most of the Russians had a massive change. People

started to view environmental resources as dispensable things and attached more preference
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to the construction of factories, houses, shops and marketplaces on pieces of land occupied by

trees and forests. This is how the blithe form of nature was being disfigured for the sake of

industrialization.

The Cherry Orchard is a political play in the sense that it uses cherry orchard as a

microcosm to depict political and social changes which were sweeping across Russia at that

time. The Cherry Orchard shows all stresses and strains of Russian national life. Gayev

family represents Russian feudal class and aristocracy which have become important in

changed world. The first blow on this class came when serfs got status of free citizens. It is

not strange that Chekhov shows that the cherry orchard was bought by the one whose

forefathers worked as slaves on the same cherry orchard. Through Lopakhin, Chekhov has

shown the merchant class which registered a very sharp ascendency in the changed Russian

circumstance.

In spite of being a supporter of change, Anton Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard

appears to be worried about the fate of people like Firs who were freed without equipping

them with skills and techniques to enable them to make maximum use of their freedom. Firs

dissatisfaction with the emancipation is well contrived and its political echoes can be ignored

in this respect. In the case Firs, The Cherry Orchard raises to status of prophetic piece of

literature because it very clearly shows that social and political changes are not always

favorable, not at least for everyone.

Industrial Revolution dampened the emotional traits of human beings and mechanized

the society. People became very much materialistic as a result of Industrial Revolution.

Instead of passion and love, price and profit became more important to people as Industrial

Revolution expanded. Money became more vital than relationship, traditions and ethical

principles.
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The gradual shift of Russia from a feudalistic social order is another point to be ticked

off in The Cherry Orchard. Following the end of serfdom in Russia which came about during

1861, a number of landlords started losing their affluence and power. On the other hand,

some liberated serfs became rich enough to buy plots of land that earlier belonged to their

landlords. Ranyevskaya is an example of the landlords whose wealth and pomp declined after

1861 and Lopakhin, another character in the play, is an envoy of those former slaves who

became well-off landowners very rapidly as a result of the social transition that flooded

Russia during the late 19th century.

The central theme of The Cherry Orchard is that of social change. Written in the early

1900s, the play depicts a Russia on the brink of revolution. As the aristocracy’s power wanes,

former serfs experience freedom, and a burgeoning middle class takes root, the central

characters of the play—representative of the upper, middle, and lower classes—find

themselves struggling to negotiate their relationships, loyalties, and anxieties about the

changing socioeconomic landscape of their country.

Through The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov dramatizes the concerns of several social

strata, showing how the emergence of a middle class in Russia disrupted and negatively

impacted the lives not only of the aristocrats their “new money” threatened, but also those of

the servants and workers unable to thrive in the new order of things. Chekhov ultimately

argues that rapid social change—though necessary for societal growth—can actually end up

leaving behind the very individuals it seeks to uplift.

At the very beginning, The Cherry Orchard establishes itself as a story about class.

Chekhov uses the titular cherry orchard—and the changing circumstances that threaten it—as

an expansive symbol of the disappearing social order and the emergence of a new one

centered around an ambitious, power-hungry middle class. At the rise of the curtain, it is a
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frosty May morning; the peasant-turned-businessman Lopakhin awaits the return of Madame

Ranyevskaya, the owner of a large estate that includes an expansive cherry orchard.

Though Ranyevskaya, who has been living abroad for five years and squandering all

her money, looks forward to returning to her old life, times have changed; she is deeply in

debt, and Lopakhin informs her that the only way to possibly save her property before it goes

up for auction in August is to parcel it up into individual plots and rent it out to the surge of

villa residents throughout the countryside.

Ranyevskaya insists that there must be another way; her reluctance to chop down her

cherry orchard symbolizes her anxieties about the social change rapidly taking place around

her and her desire to hold onto her position in the world—a desire that will soon prove

impossible. As the play progresses, the summer goes by, and Ranyevskaya continually

ignores Lopakhin’s repeated suggestion that she parcel up the land and rent it out. Her denial

of her situation—the play’s central examination of the disorienting effect of social upheaval

upon the wealthy—is complemented by Chekhov’s portrayal of how social innovation affects

the servant class.

Dunyasha, a young serving-girl working at the estate, struggles to act and dress more

like a refined lady even as everyone around her calls her out for striving beyond her

station; Yasha, Madame Ranyevskaya’s aloof and cruel manservant, acts as if he is too good

for others of his class, treating visits from his mother, a peasant, as burdensome annoyances

and treating Dunyasha, Anya’s governess Charlotte, and Ephikhodof badly.

First, the oldest servant in the household, laments the day serfs were liberated from

the land they were bound to and seems to be living in the past, when servants showed total

allegiance to their masters. As the play goes on, Chekhov uses Firs’s mental block when it

comes to accepting social change to show how profoundly in denial members of all social
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classes are at the prospect of societal upheaval—and the idea that the traditions they have

clung to for centuries are soon to be rendered obsolete.

In the play’s third act, Ranyevskaya throws a lavish party to distract herself from the

fact that her brother Gayev and Lopakhin are off at the big auction, supposedly attempting to

save the estate. The party symbolizes her attempt to live in denial a little longer, even at the

literal eleventh hour—as a member of the aristocracy, things have always come easy to

Ranyevskaya and people like her.

The idea that she might actually lose her family’s home and orchard brings her

anxiety, but something about it still seems implausible—until, of course, Lopakhin returns

from the auction to reveal that he has purchased the orchard. Lopakhin is gleeful as he

recounts how he outbid everyone else present—the son of poor, lowly peasants, Lopakhin is

boastful as he realizes that he has just surpassed and usurped the very family whose charity

his own once relied on to survive.

In the fourth and final act, Ranyevskaya and her family pack up while Lopakhin

anxiously waits for them to vacate the house. As the family runs about frantically rounding

up their things and attempting to say goodbye to their precious family home, the sound of

axes chopping down trees wafts through the windows. Lopakhin has already hired men to fell

the orchard and make way for his new “reign” over the property.

The aristocracy has been toppled, and the middle class is moving in. Ranyevskaya and

Gayev’s grief is palpable, and yet Anya, Trophimof, and Yasha seem anxious to get out of

the house and on with their new lives. After everyone departs, the elderly servant Firs enters

the room, and finds that he has been locked inside the house. Ill and alone, he laments that his

life has come to nothing before lying down on the sofa and, presumably, dying as the sounds
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of the axes start up again. Firs, too, has been left behind and left to die by the changes

sweeping Russia.

Anton Chekhov’s play tells the story of what happens when both rich and poor are left

behind by the rise to prominence of a class whose concerns do not take into mind either

group’s needs. Chekhov could easily have made The Cherry Orchard about the pitiful,

obsolete concerns of the wealthy, landowning class in the face of the triumph of the common

people; instead, he takes a more nuanced view and incorporates the very real way in which

even positive social change renders certain ways of life irrelevant and leaves even privileged

families and individuals out in the cold, unprepared for the new world stretching out before

them.
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Chapter 3

Love in Multi Facets in The Cherry Orchard

Ranyevskaya, the leading character in The Cherry Orchard is constantly haunted by

the loving memories about the cherry trees. Love plays a significant role in this play.

Ranyevskaya, on one hand, intends to sell the cherry estate while on the other hand she feels

devastated at the thought of the cutting down of the cherry trees. In this way her love for the

cherry trees puts Ranyevskaya in a divided state of mind over and over again in The Cherry

Orchard.

Ranyevskaya lost two persons she loved most in The Cherry Orchard. Those two

persons are her husband and her son. Both of them died while Ranyevskaya was a young

lady. She still preserves love in her mind for her husband and her son who no longer exist.

Ranyevskaya’s love for her son, her husband and her love for the cherry orchard put forward

the theme of multidimensional love in this play. Ranyevskaya loves her daughter Anya too.

Ranyevskaya’s daughter Anya also loves the cherry trees. She also has loving memories

about the cherry orchard.

In this chapter we see that, Love is different facets in the Cherry Orchard. Actually

love is not only love. Example, the love between old aristocracy. Love between master and

servant. Love between mother and son. Love between madam Ranevskaya and his lover.

Also we can see that in this paper character relationship between in the Cherry Orchard. We

know that different characters fall in love Lady Ranevskaya was living in Paris with man

whom she seems to be in love. Madame Ranevskaya owns the family estate with the Cherry

Orchard on it. She is depressed about the death of her son five years earlier and has been

living in Paris with a lover who does not treat her well.
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Lopakhin is a businessman, and the son of peasants on Ranevskaya is estate.

Lopakhin is extremely self-conscious, especially in the presence of Ranevskaya. Also he is a

neighbor of Madame Ranevskaya, perhaps in his thirties, unmarried. Although he was born

into a family of serfs, Lopakhin has managed to use the liberation of the serfs to his full

advantage and is now a wealthy landowner and a shrewd businessman. Another character

Barbara is Madame Ranevskaya oldest daughter. She is somewhat old to still be single,

perhaps in her twenties, her family anticipates that she will marry Lopakhin, and although she

would like to, Lopakhin never proposes to her. She is controlling person, but she cannot look

out for the servant's. She is controlling practicality is her best and worst quality. On the one

hand, her level head keeps the estate running when there is no money to run it with, on the

other hand, the responsibility she feels towards the Cherry Orchard causes her nothing but

grief and stress. At the end of the play she takes on a position as a housekeeper.

Other servant class characters include Yepikhodov, a clerk Yasha, and unpleasant

and rude young manservant, Dunyasha, a maid who is in love with Yasha and originally was

a peasant and Firs, an old manservant who is nostalgic for the days of serfdom. Each of

focuses on the interactions of Ranevskaya, her family, their friends, and their servants as the

family estate is sold at auction. At the end of the play, the Cherry Orchard devastates

Ranevskaya. While at the estate, Ranevskaya runs into her dead son’s former tutor Peter

Trofimov, and the meeting stirs up her grief. After she exits the stage Anya, tells her older,

adopted sister, Varya, that their mother is in debt. Madame Ranevskaya lives her love .It's in

the way she moves, as Gave says. It influences all her actions, including her way with money,

as we discussed above. She freely gives money to everyone from the homeless to her

worthless lover in Paris.

The Cherry Orchard is a tragicomedy in its type with more tragic components than

the comic ones. The play concludes with the fall of Firs on the ground in a state of
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consternation at the sound of the axe slaughtering the cherry trees coming from the

background. Ranyevskaya is also found shedding tears as the decimation of the cherry trees

begins. Ranyevskaya leaves Russia to move back to France in a dismayed mood. The Cherry

Orchard conveys the message that it’s a lamentable thing to abandon or vitiate inherited

resources, particularly the environmental ones.

Love has been played down upon by the author; he depicts a society wherein love has

no place over practicality. There is an expectation that Varya is to be married to Lopakhin

while Anya is in deep and emotional love of Trofimov, the intellectual. But the humor and

irony lie in the fact that both of the male characters show no intelligence of practicality in

understanding them and the prospects at all. Lopakhin remains busy in his professional

responsibilities while Trofimov deems" love" a “petty illusion”.

He complains to Anya about Varya: “Can't she understand that we're above all that?

We must be free of the small, the pointless” (Chekhov 1- 21). With the departure of

Lopakhin, “it's all over” for Varya. Anya utters “Good Bye! Old life” (Chekhov 23 - 37). A

change has been thrust upon the characters of the play. None of the relationships appear

successful. Even the most intelligent philosophic Trofimov and the most practical Lopakhin

leave their love. This is foolish but pathetic.

All the focal figures in The Cherry Orchard appear to be disconcerted because of their

failure to preserve the cherry trees which they had inherited from their predecessors. It’s not

categorically stated in the text of the play whether Firs died or not but the mental jolt he

suffered through the felling of the cherry trees at the end of the play breaks him down. This is

another flabbergasting instance pointing the distress inflicted on people when their beloved

environmental surroundings are invaded. So, the principal figures in the play cannot be

scrutinized without referring to the theme of love in this play.

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Firs had been looking after the cherry trees since his boyhood. He developed an

immense love for the cherry trees. That’s why while the cherry trees were being chopped

down, we see Firs falling down and passing away.

Monetary gains became more important than the value of heritage which is why we

find some characters of the play endorsing the process of making life mechanized, moving

away from the quietude, placidity and verdure of nature. Taking this thematic point of the

play, we can evaluate The Cherry Orchard from an eco-critical perspective, as eco-criticism

examines the relationship between human beings and natural entities as illustrated in

literature and looks into the way people’s attitude towards nature keeps on changing with the

passage of time and the sanctity of nature is hardly taken care of.

According to Peter Barry’s book Beginning Theory, William Reuckert was the first

scholar to apply the term “ecocriticism” in 1978 in a book titled Literature and Ecology: An

Experiment in Ecocriticism (240). As found in William Reuckert’s book Literature and

Ecology: An Experiment in Eco-criticism, eco-criticism takes into account “the application of

ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature” (242). Ecology stands for

environmental studies; therefore, the hazarded plight of the cherry trees in The Cherry

Orchard is explicitly relevant to the core ideas of eco-criticism.

Ranyevskaya is found remorseful in some parts of the play while thinking about her

plans to sell out the cherry trees which have been profoundly attached to her life since her

childhood. She calls back the lovely memories linked with the cherry trees through the

following dialogue: “Oh, my childhood, my innocence! In this nursery I slept, from this room

I looked out at the orchard and happiness woke with me every morning.” (Chekhov 37-60)

Ranyevskaya’s utterance of the word “innocence” how blissful and sanctified time

she had during her tender age living close by the cherry grove. Her emotional leaning towards
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the cherry trees also get reflected in the dialogue cited above. Her exasperating struggle with

memory and the agony caused by the idea of disposing the cherry trees are more sharply

presented in the following words of Ranyevskaya, “If only the millstone could be lifted from

my neck. If only I could forget my past.” (Chekhov 78)

Ranyevskaya’s reference to the word “millstone” is a symbolic hint at the industrial

incursion going on across Russia during the 19th century which brought about the demolition

of a massive part of Russian wilderness while simultaneously it reminds us once again of her

hardship under the grinding torment of catastrophic memories.

Many of the characters in The Cherry Orchard are shown to be actively fighting

against—or struggling to contain—feelings of love and sentimentality as the play goes on.

The radical Peter Trophimof believes himself “above love,” even though he harbors

unresolved feelings for Anya; Barbara is passively waiting on a proposal from the wealthy

Lopakhin, a proposal that may never come. Dunyasha longs to prove herself a sentimental

lady in order to appeal to the cultured but priggish Yasha; Madame Ranyevskaya’s cruel

lover, off in Paris, has jilted her more times than she can count and yet she still harbors

feelings for him. As Chekhov’s characters dance around their true feelings—sometimes

literally—the playwright shows that to treat sentimentality as vulnerability or even a liability

is as harmful as diving headlong into one’s feelings without any consideration for others.

Chekhov ultimately argues that total denial of one’s feelings is just as harmful as

overindulgence in or manufacturing of them and that in order to be good to one another,

people must relate to one another honestly and openly.

Many characters throughout the play attempt to deny sentimentality—most notably

Trophimof, who’s repeated proclamation that he is “above love” directly contradicts his

romantic feelings for the beautiful and aristocratic Anya. Trophimof, a perpetual student who
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has long served as the family’s tutor, is a revolutionary with radical ideas about the failings of

the middle class, the dangers of a lazy life as a passive member of the “intelligentsia,” and the

evils of both wealth and sentiment, and he places his treasured ideals above his own feelings.

In doing so, he hurts both Anya—to whom he promises the approach of happiness but

denies his affections, effectively leading her on—and Madame Ranyevskaya—whose grief he

writes off as sentimental, despite having witnessed firsthand, as Grisha’s tutor, the intense

pain the woman felt at the time of her child’s loss.

Chekhov uses Trophimof to show how a rejection of sentimentality on the grounds of

clear-eyed revolutionary thinking—or allegiance to ideals above all else—is cruel.

Trophimof’s total denial of his ability to feel, give, and desire love and empathy is one

extreme—but the overindulgence in sentimentality is the other, and Chekhov does not favor

either end of the spectrum.

Though Chekhov implicitly indicts Trophimof’s cruel, cold rejection of

sentimentality, he also takes an unforgiving view of excessive romanticism of one’s

circumstances. Dunyasha’s desire to give herself over to sentimentality is born out of her

desire to appear more like a lady. In the midst of the burgeoning social upheaval throughout

Russia, Dunyasha longs to rise above her station and appear more upper—or at least

middle—class. She thinks that by affecting the nervous demeanor, fluttering disposition, and

simpering weakness of a “lady,” she will make herself more refined—not to mention more

attractive to the cruel but “cultured” Yasha.

Dunyasha’s overindulgence in sentimentalism is shown in a comic light throughout

the play, and as Dunyasha affects increasingly ridiculous habits and patterns of speech,

Chekhov impute her sentimentality at least as violently as Trophimof’s calculated, self-

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denying pragmatism. Madame Ranevsky’s sentimental disposition, too, is examined in both

comic and tragic lights throughout the play. Her longing for the past, evidenced through her

delving constantly into childhood memories as she returns to her family’s estate, as well as

her inability to resist the allure of being loved (shown through her constant waffling over

whether or not to respond to her cruel ex-lover’s telegrams from Paris) is clearly

contemptible to Chekhov.

As Ranyevskaya laments the loss of her youth and happiness—and her desire for her

lover despite knowing that he is like a gorgeous but heavy necklace, slowly throttling her—

Chekhov imbues her character with a tilt toward sentimentalism that Dunyasha imitates and

Trophimof abhors, demonstrating how sentimentalism, though often born of very real and

intense feelings, can make even the most genuine suffering appear cartoonish and showy.

The Cherry Orchard was written as a comedy but is often performed as a tragedy—as

it was in its world premiere at the Moscow Art Theater in 1904. The confusion as to the

play’s genre seems to stem from Chekhov’s desire to lampoon both sentimentality and cold

indifference. There is very real tragedy within the pages of the play, but his characters’

sentimentality is often over-exaggerated to the point of parody.

Anton Chekhov laments the affected emotional extremes that people so often

succumb to, and in many ways uses The Cherry Orchard to argue for measured but genuine

emotional expression and intelligence—both onstage and off. In The Cherry

Orchard, memory is seen both as source of personal identity and as a burden preventing the

attainment of happiness. Each character is involved in a struggle to remember, but more

importantly in a struggle to forget, certain aspects of their past.

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Ranyevskaya wants to seek refuge in the past from the despair of her present life. She

wants to remember the past and forget the present. But the estate itself contains awful

memories of the death of her son, memories she is reminded of as soon as she arrives and

sees Trofimov, her son's tutor. For Lopakhin, memories are oppressive, for they are memories

of a brutal, uncultured peasant upbringing.

For Mrs. Ranyevskaya, her daughters, and her brother Leonid Gayev, apathy and

passivity have become a way of life, as Mrs. Ranyevskaya’s line “if only this heavy load

could be lifted from my heart; if only I could forget my past!” (Galens 21-39) reveals. Mrs.

Ranevsky has given up trying to change her circumstances and is resigned to taking her life

as it comes. She goes out to expensive lunches, buys a gift for Anya, lends her neighbor

Pishchik money, and gives a gold piece to the homeless.

Mrs. Ranyevskaya refuses to accept that she can change her circumstances by

changing her behavior. She becomes passive and allows the auction to take place. Gayev,

Anya, and Varya also become passive in the situation, and continue to believe that everything

will work out. This apathy-combined with a fear of living below the standards to which

they’ve become accustomed—is what keeps the family from saving its orchard.

The family ignores Lopakhin’s suggestion of breaking up the orchard into smaller

plots for country cottages. Mrs. Ranevsky considers the suggestion vulgar, declaring that the

orchard is famous for being the largest and most beautiful in Russia. She and her brother do

almost nothing to avert the auction and remaining passive and hoping for a solution or a

savior, such as their relative the Countess, seals their fate.

A good example of this passivity is this statement from Gayev: “I’ve been thinking,

racking my brains; I’ve got all sorts of remedies, lots of them, which, of course, means I
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haven’t got one.” This lack of ability to adapt to the changing social conditions in Russia at

the turn of the century was very common, as many wealthy landowners lost their estates to

debt. Gayev would rather mime billiard shots than find a real solution to the financial

situation in which his family finds itself. (Chekhov 44)

Varya also remains passive, though she tries to save money where she can by feeding

the servants only dried peas. It upsets her to stand by as her mother and uncle do nothing, but

she is powerless to act without their support. Varya wishes to enter a convent but does not;

she is even incapable of acting on her own behalf in this instance. Similarly, Varya’s

passivity when it comes to her love for Yermolay Lopakhin (and his passivity toward it as

well) leads to their inability to commit to one another in marriage.

Both repeatedly say they have no objections to marriage, but neither proposes it,

because Varya is held by social constraints and Lopakhin by his obsession with business.

Mrs. Ranevsky tells Lopakhin to propose to Varya, but he fails to comply, even while he tells

Mrs. Ranevsky: “I’m ready even now. . . . Let’s settle it at once and get it over. I don’t feel

I’ll ever propose to her without you here.” (Gale, 15) When brought together, Varya and

Lopakhin remain inactive, exchanging only small talk. Lopakhin is called away and the

moment is lost. Their inability to act destroys any hope of marriage.

One of the most profound themes in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is loss.

From Madame Ranyevskaya, her brother Gayef, and her daughters Barbara and Anya’s loss

of their ancestral home, to Ranyevskaya’s lingering grief over the death of her youngest son

Grisha, to Ephikhodof’s resigned acceptance of his daily misfortunes, every character within

the play—even the minor ones—is struggling with feelings of loss, grief, and pain. In

suffusing each character’s story with some measure of loss, Chekhov points out the suffering

and pain that affect humanity indiscriminately, paying no mind to class, privilege, or social
 Begum 20

standing, and argues that no one is immune to, or can be protected from, feelings of loss and

grief.

At the same time, class allows the more privileged to indulge their grief, while the

less privileged must suffer silently in order to avoid falling behind in their duties to those they

are bound to serve out of tradition or necessity.

In this play, no one is safe from the alienating and demoralizing effects of loss. The

undiscerning nature of pain is most acutely demonstrated through the suffering of the play’s

main protagonist, Madame Ranyevskaya. Five years ago, shortly after the death of her drunk

spendthrift of a husband, Madame Ranyevskaya’s youngest son Grisha died by drowning. In

the wake of his death, Ranevsky took up with a lover who treated her poorly, and fled with

the man to Paris—no doubt to escape her grief. At the start of the play, though not all of the

information about what transpired in Paris is known, it is clear that Ranyevskaya’s attempt to

dodge the pain of her losses has backfired. Her youngest daughter Anya traveled to Paris to

fetch her, and found her living in questionable circumstances, completely drained of funds.

Ranyevskaya, in her suffering, fled the “duties” of her life in the country—running

the estate, mothering Barbara and Anya and securing educations and marriages for them—in

order to indulge her own grief and try to escape the pain of her loss. Ranevskaya, due to her

elevated social standing, was in a position in which she could both afford literally and

figuratively to do so. She was able to behave selfishly, foolishly, and even dangerously,

because her privilege protected her in many ways—even if it could not save her from being a

victim of loss and pain.

The play’s servant characters are also often seen struggling with intense grief and

feelings of loss—though the ways they are “allowed” to express and process their feelings are

very different from that of the upper-class characters. Ephikhodof, the family’s clerk, is an
 Begum 21

odd man who seems unlearned in social graces and perpetually in a depressive fog. At first,

Ephikhodof seems to be nothing more than an odd bit of comic relief—in the play’s second

act, however, he reveals that he always carries a revolver with him in case he feels the need to

kill himself.

Ephikhodof due to his somber nature and propensity for getting into physical or

interpersonal blunders—is dogged by a very deep sense of grief. Though the audience never

learns its source, Ephikhodof’s penetrating sadness goes from being a joke to a very serious

matter in the span of just a couple acts.

Charlotte, Anya’s governess, is a funny woman skilled in tricks and illusions who, in

the second act, reveals that she is the orphaned daughter of circus performers who led her

around the continent from show to show, never revealing where she was born or establishing

for their child a place where she truly belonged. Despite her quirky veneer and penchant for

showmanship, Charlotte’s waters run deep; her statelessness and loneliness wear on her, and

she frequently laments how alone she feels in the world. Charlotte’s words, more often than

not, fall on deaf ears, and so her sense of loneliness and grief is only compounded. Chekhov

uses the suffering of his minor characters to show how everyone in the world suffers in ways

both seen and unseen, private and public.

Loss and grief penetrate all echelons of the social stratosphere, and yet members of

the lower classes such as Dunyasha, Charlotte, and Ephikhod of are forced to push their pain

down and suffer in silence—or at least in obscurity—while more well-off individuals such as

Ranevskaya can afford to indulge their pain by, say, taking five-year jaunts to Paris so as to

avoid living in the house where their child drowned.

As Chekhov explores the public and private sufferings of his characters, he makes it a

point to show his audience the ways in which class influences peoples’ ability to process and
 Begum 22

handle their pain. While the upper classes are allowed more leeway, the servant class, which

keeps the wheels of their masters’ lives oiled, must put the needs of others before their own,

thus sublimating their own feelings and often—unfortunately—leading to improper,

underdeveloped, or even dangerous ways of expressing the grief that they, too, feel deeply.

Class conflict is the driving circumstance in The Cherry Orchard. Anton Chekhov

portrays Russia after in the freeing of the serfs, in a moment of flux. While the society used to

be well-stratified, now everything's all mixed up. There are servants who want to stay

servants, like 87-year-old Firs.

There are servants who pretend to be ladies and gentlemen, like Dunyasha and Yasha.

There are former peasants who are rich and getting richer, like Lopakhin while the aristocrats

lose their wealth due to the sale of their assets, particularly lands.

Several characters address the potential difference between social change and social

progress. Firs and Trophimov are two of them. Both question the utility of the Liberation. As

Firs notes, it made everyone happy, but they did not know what they were happy for. Firs

himself is living proof of this discrepancy: society has changed, but his life, and the lives of

countless others, have not progressed.

Both characters insinuate that the Liberation is not enough to constitute progress;

while it was a necessary change, it was not enough to bring mankind to the idealized future

Trophimof imagines. The play leaves the impression that while change has come, there is

more work to be done.

As The Cherry Orchard depicts a changing society, the characters spend a lot of time

thinking about how now compares to then. How characters relate to the past determines their

investment in the play's major question: will the cherry orchard be saved? As a symbol of the
 Begum 23

past of the Russian empire, the orchard evokes longing, regret, or disgust – sometimes a

combination of all three.

Despite the painful resistance of most characters, in the end, a cord to the past is

snipped. The cherry orchard is sold, the house is shuttered, and the old servant is left to die.

As the play begins, there is already a reference to a lost past, and the fact that adults

still go in the nursery shows how difficult it is to move on and to break with the past.

Consequently, even before the reader knows everything about each character, he can guess

that they do not come easily with their present. Indeed, most characters refuse to evolve and

don’t realize that life goes on. They are eager to stay in the comfort of an idyllic past in order

to forget their sufferings from the present.

Some characters are really attached to everything that represents their past and brings

up a memory. For example, in the first act, when Gayev sees the bookcase, he is over-excited

and joyful to have found a connection with his memories.

Gayev was extremely touched and talked on the verge of tears: “most esteemed

bookcase”; “I salute your existence” … (Bavis 168) Gayev’s reaction is exaggerated and

childish, so it shows that he gives an extremely great value to things concerning his past.

Furthermore, here acts the same way he would have reacted before, which shows that he

didn’t mentally evolve.

Throughout the book, most characters reveal a part of their lives by telling the story of

their childhood, an event that they went through which influenced the rest of their lives, the

people they met. All these personal revelations bring memories in the center of the play.
 Begum 24

Anton Chekhov does not present an either-or assessment of the past in The Cherry

Orchard. The play does not portray the past as either good or bad. Instead the past has both

positive and negative aspects for most of the characters.

Ranyevskaya embodies this struggle to make sense of a past that is both beautiful and

brutal. She is passionate about reclaiming the happy past of her childhood and memories of

her beautiful cherry orchard. She is so deeply lodged in her personal history, in fact, that she

cannot entertain a future that departs from her idealized memories. Yet Ranyevskaya’s past is

also filled with tragedy: her husband's death, her young son's drowning, a bad love affair, and

her financial woes. She alternates between joy and despair as she relives an earlier time in her

home. "Nothing has changed," she exclaims when she arrives, but of course everything has

changed.

Lopakhin seeks to escape his brutal past by working his way into a respectable future.

Sometimes self-conscious about his peasant origins, Lopakhin remains aware of the forces

that shaped him—his father and grandfather were serfs. He is fond of Lyubov Andreyevna

and tries to help her, but when she will not act to save her estate he does not hesitate to take

the cherry orchard for his own glory.

Lopakhin's past and future combine in the cherry orchard. Anton Chekhov

makes Trofimov the keeper of Russia's past and the herald of Russia's future. Trofimov

reminds anyone who will listen of the brutality that built the class system, a system that is

now eroding. He sees the cherry orchard not as a symbol of a charmed past but as an emblem

of oppression. Like Lopakhin, Trofimov does not care about preserving the orchard. To

Lopakhin the orchard is special because it is big (and a potential business opportunity). To

Trofimov the orchard is something to be shed so a more egalitarian future can begin.

Firs, of course, dwells most resolutely in a past far removed from the play's present. His
 Begum 25

language and actions are born from a time before the serfs were free, yet his memory of this

golden time fails.

Firs remember when the cherry orchard was a success yet cannot recall the recipe for

the once famous dried cherries produced from its harvests. It's "forgotten," he admits,

"nobody remembers." The line is a poignant foreshadowing of Fars’s fate, as he, too, is

eventually forgotten at the end of the play.

There's a good amount of death in The Cherry Orchard. It is mentioned over and

over. The memory of a dead son and husband haunt the main character, Ranyevskaya. The

clown threatens to kill himself. Departing family describe the house as "at the end of its life."

And though Chekhov isn't explicit about it, we're pretty sure we witness the death of Firs, the

loyal old servant. Just like the shifting social landscape, death is an inevitable part of life.

The Cherry Orchard begins with a homecoming. The main character Ranyevskaya

believes that, in returning home, she can restore her life to a state of innocence. “Ever heard

that saying, "You can never go home again? (Chekhov 9)" Ranyevskaya learns the hard way.

Home has become a bittersweet mixture of happy and sad memories, worry, and conflict. It's

under siege by economic forces and social change. The Cherry Orchard begins with a

homecoming, but ends – just six months later – with an eviction.

When it comes to money, nobody is neutral in The Cherry Orchard. Characters are

begging for it, borrowing it, planning to make more of it, or proudly declaring their

independence from it. An aristocratic family, impractical and naïve, continues to spend as

they might have a hundred years ago. They've never worked for money and can't begin now.

Meanwhile, the son of a serf draws on his resources – mainly, a willingness to work hard – to

build a fortune.
 Begum 26

Chapter 4

Dysfunctional Love and the Presence of Romance

The Cherry Orchard tells a failed love story. Ranyevskaya, the protagonist of the

play, is not happy as far as love is concerned. Her husband and her son, two most beloved

persons in her life, died several years back. She later on fell in love with another man in Paris

but that love affair does not succeed either. In this way it gives the feeling to readers and

viewers that love is portrayed as a painful phenomenon by Anton Chekhov in The Cherry

Orchard. Another failure of love in this play is the fact that the major characters in the drama

fail to save the cherry trees from the onslaught of Industrial Revolution. Ranyevskaya comes

under compulsion for emotional as well as financial reasons to sell the cherry trees which are

about to be chopped down.

Ranyevsakya and her daughter Anya deepy love the cherry trees but they fail to

preserve these trees. This is another failure about love in The Cherry Orchard. Love is a

divine gift. It makes people happy. It comforts people but in The Cherry Orchard we find

love coming up as a troublesome and pathetic matter which fills the life of Ranyevskaya,

Anya and Gayev with pain. Their love stories come back to their minds in the form of

memories only to hurt them. This is how love is a tragic theme in The Cherry Orchard.

Ranyevskaya decides to sell out the cherry trees to get rid of her love memories which keep

on increasing her emotional pain. So, love is not a success story in The Cherry Orchard.

Rather the love stories between Ranyevskaya, Anya and the cherry trees tell a story of failure

and devastation.
 Begum 27

In this paper I want to say Romance is the feeling we chase in relationship. Actually,

Romance is not true love. It's feelings with another person. It’s important to note that

romance is different for men and women.

Madame Ranevskaya is one of the leading characters in the play. She is the owner of the

Cherry orchard estate, and she is a woman with a complicated history.

In this play we know that different characters fall in love with one another. Being a

widow, Lady Ranevskaya was living in Paris with man whom she seems to be in love .But

her relation with him does not turn out to be fruitful .We also know that Lopakin falls In love

with Varya , adopted daughter of Lady Ranevskaya ,but due to the business mentality, the

love between theme does not end in marriage.

Similarly, Yasha and Dunyasha are not brought together by the end of the play Anya

and Trofimov also face same destiny of not having love/marriage. None of the relationship

ends with marriage. So the play carries the theme of unsuccessful love affairs. All the people

who are in love affairs belong to Ranevskaya's family in some sense. As the family suffers

from economic status is to be strengthened in order to success in social and human

relationship

Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904) is stories of dysfunctional love, rather

than of true love. By the term dysfunctional love, this paper suggests to that love cannot

emotionally satisfy its participants by bringing them closer to each other. Instead of true love,

we can see only the romance. As a result, none of the romances in the play ever ends with the

union of its parties or, at least, a promise of it. The reason beyond this dysfunctional love is

that the characters suffer from a chronic sense of low self-esteem those results as a

psychological core issue from their repressed negative memories. This underrated sense of

the self causes the characters to fear intimacy and develop negative concepts of them as being
 Begum 28

guilty, unworthy, and unlovable. Therefore, they get in love relationships for pure

psychological reasons: either to act out their past failures in love or to use love as a defense

for hiding their low self-esteem. The method of research in this study is the classical

psychoanalytical approach to literary criticism with its emphasis on such concepts as

repression, core issues, and defenses. (Abdelfadeel 12)

In as much as the romance between Ranveskaya and her lover in Paris is an example

of dysfunctional love, the one between Lopakhin and Varia is so. Though Lopakhin shows

what may be considered signs of love, he never proposes to her or, at least, utters a frank

word of love to her; she also never pronounces the word “love” to express her emotions

towards him; rather, she speaks of a kind of attraction and special feelings, nothing more, as

if love is something to be ashamed of. When alone towards the end of the play, both fail to

utter a word in this regard, something which seems strange and incomprehensible. However,

getting deep inside the psychological history of both can help us understand this kind of

dysfunctional love whose participants seem to be afraid to get closer to each other.

(Abdelfadeel 15)

In the same way the romance between Lopakhin and Varia is an example of

dysfunctional love, the one between Trofimov and Ania is of the same sort. Although on the

surface their story may seem the most promising of all love stories in The Cherry Orchard –

both of them are still young, full of energy, so optimistic about the future, and less paralyzed

by much of the past that Ranveskaya and Lopakhin share its two extremes – the matter is

completely the opposite. The romance takes the same route of the other ones in the play; they

come close to each other to the degree that all around them think they are in love and expect

marriage or at least a promise of it, yet, nothing of all this happens. Trofimov negates being

in love and asserts that he and Ania are “above love”, and Ania does not object. (Abdelfadeel

19)
 Begum 29

The presence of Romance in The Cherry Orchard can be seen in the triangle love

among Yepihodov, Dooniasha, and Yasha. Yepihodov loves Dooniasha, but she in turn loves

Yasha, and the latter seems to love none but himself. Closely investigating this complicated

relationship between the three, however, one can easily discover that none of them has ever

loved truly. They only try to escape their low self-esteem by pretending to be in love. Yet, all

of them fear intimacy and avoid falling in true love and, thus, their relationships turn to be

stories of dysfunctional love.

Trofimov also refuses to marry Dooniasha because she stands for the same past he

wants to escape from. However, he does not hesitate to approach her sexually. Yasha’s

relationship with Dooniasha should be understood in the light of his relationship with his

mother. It has been mentioned before that the mother represents for him the eternal values of

virtue, devotedness, and love that he purposefully overlooks to avoid being bound to live in

Russia.

Trofimov tells her more than once that, “Personally I dislike it more than anything if a

girl doesn’t behave herself.” (Chekhov 453) He also says, “To my thinking, it’s like this: if a

girl loves somebody, it means she is immoral.” This means that for him she belongs to the

bad, impure girls that do not resemble his mother. As such, he flirts and kisses her but also

scolds, blames, hurts, and finally leaves her. He refuses to marry Dooniasha because in doing

so he will be betraying the perfect example of his mother. And, thus, love between them turns

to be dysfunctional rather than true (Chekhov 26).

 Begum 30

Chapter 5

Conclusion

It has been learned through this thesis work that Industrial Revolution brought about

enormous social, economic and political transformations in Russia. Landlords or landladies

like Ranyevskaya were gradually losing their aristocracy. They were facing financial crisis.

For this reason we find Ranyevskaya selling her beloved cherry orchard in this play though

she loves the cherry trees very profoundly.

Some of the social patterns in Russia turned upside down according to The Cherry

Orchard as a consequence of Industrial Revolution. Some people who were earlier on serfs

became rich all on a sudden as they managed to buy the assets of landlords for a low price. In

this way the socio-economic scenario was sharply changing in Russia during the 19 th century.

For example in this play Lopakhin who was once a serf intends to buy his landlady

Ranyevskaya’s plot on which the cherry trees are located.

Ranyevskaya is found to be a remorseful lady all over the play. She suffers from

continuous pain recalling the deaths of her husband and her son. These dolorous memories

keep on chasing her all the time. On top of that she finds it very saddening to sell the cherry

orchard with which her entire life is bonded. She cannot imagine her life, her sorrow and her

past happiness without the cherry trees. Therefore, the thought of selling the cherry trees

breaks her heart.

The transition of Russia from an agrarian stance to an industrialized country is

another angle of the play The Cherry Orchard. People were departing from countryside and

rushing towards towns and cities to find jobs in factories leaving behind farms and cattle.
 Begum 31

Even landlords who lived abroad like Ranyevskaya came back home to sell out her property

for money though she finds it shocking to be compelled to sell out her ancestral land.

When society goes through staggering changes some people become helpless. This

helplessness forced people like Ranyevskaya to sell the cherry trees she loved most. The

loving relationship between the cherry trees, Ranyevskaya, her daughter Anya and the elderly

serf Firs is strikingly reflected through some of the dialogues in the play.

Firs, who used to take care of the cherry orchard was so much hurt at the felling of the

cherry trees that he falls down on the floor leading to the halt of his physical movement

which implies his death. Firs actually could not tolerate the cutting down of the cherry trees

which he looked after for so many years since his boyhood.

The Cherry Orchard can be analysed in light of philosophical terms too. It can be

called an existential play keeping in view the fact that the existence of the cherry trees is

explicitly affiliated with the existence of Ranyevskaya, Anya, Gayev, Lopakhin and Firs.

Ranyevskaya cannot think about her life isolating it with the existence of the cherry trees.

Anya cannot alienate herself from the cherry garden either because of her childhood

memories attached with the cherry trees.

First, the old caretaker of the cherry orchard reaches the end of his life at the sound of

the cherry trees being chopped down. He could not stand such a tragic end of the cherry trees

which mean a lot for his existence. Thus the plot of The Cherry Orchard can be interpreted

on the basis of existential philosophy.

 Begum 32

The story of the play The Cherry Orchard has implicit capitalistic underpinnings as

well. It is because of the capitalistic trend triggered by Industrial Revolution some people

abandoned the ancestral value of their assets and decide to sell them out for instant money. In

the same way some people like Lopakhin beneficiaries of capitalism by getting an

opportunity to become rich overnight by purchasing the properties of former landlords.

 Begum 33

Works Cited

Abdelfadeel,Gaber Mahmoud “Dysfunctional Love in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard:A

Psychoanalytical Reading” Ain shams University, research gate July 2013

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory, 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.

Print.

Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard. Trans, Michael Frayn. London: Eyre Methuen Ltd.,

1978. Print.

Chekhov, Anthon.The Cherry Orchard. “Romance and Love in The Cherry Orchard”.

2011, www. Bachelorandmaster.com/36111626/ Romance_ and_ Love _Chekhov

_The _Cherry _Orchard. Accessed. January 29.

Chekhov, Anthon. The Cherry Orchard. “Love is multi facets’’

Lavine, TZ. From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest. London: Bantam Books, 1998.

Print.

Rayfield, Donald. Anton Chekhov: A Life. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000.

Print.