Chekhov's "Five Sisters"

CHEKHOV'S HFIVE SISTERS" WHENEVER THE QUESTION OF WHY three sisters comes up, there is seldom any mention of the fact that this grouping is simply a gender distinction, that there are, structurally speaking, five sisters inhabiting the Prozorov household. Andrey is simply another "sister," as is Dr. Chebutykin. Our interest is focused upon the three girls, but all five characters are needed to complete the pattern of experience The Three Sisters reveals. Everything in the play is keyed to Irena. She does not dominate the action; domination implies a special significance of some sort, and Irena's story is no more significant than anyone else's. Hers is simply more nearly complete. Absolutely nothing unique happens to Irena; every hope or frustration she experiences is paralleled by a similar hope or frustration in someone else. Irena learns she must face a life that has no love in it; so do Masha, Olga, Andrey, Vershinin, Tusenbach, Soliony, and Kulygin. Irena abandons big hopes and accepts little ones in their places; so do Masha, Olga, Andrey, Vershinin, Tusenbach, Soliony, and Kulygin. Irena's experience is the total of that of the other participants in the action. Whether these others serve to echo Irena or she them is a chicken-or-egg question ; it doesn't matter, as the play is about one experience, and that one common to all. This experience is the attempt to express some need, to satisfy some longing. All the characters are controlled by this need for expression ; they all want something. Irena at first does not know precisely where to look for outlets for her energy, but she doesn't really worry about it; Moscow, romance, work, a happy life-they're all mixed up together. Eventually, however, they begin to sort themselves out, and they become simply variations on a theme, that is, changing picturizations of the same feeling. This feeling-the need for gratifying desire-remains constant throughout the action, but the representation of it changes. Feeling and the piCturing of feeling are divorced, and the feeling "floats" until it can support itself by becoming attached to another picture. Irena begins talking to Moscow almost the moment the curtain rises; her ideal of Moscow life would provide a romantic outlet for her desires-a little selfindulgent , but certainly harmless. But when nothing comes of this, her need must find a new way to represent itself, a way quite different from the one that failed her. So instead of a self-indulgent goal, she sets up a self-denying one, and works at two petty jobs that depress and coarsen her. Her need is still clamoring to be satisfied, and it is 436 1972 CHEKHOV'S "FIVE SISTERS" 437 with a sense of weariness that Irena accepts a thirdpicturization: marriage ~but without the romance she once dreamed of. When even this is denied her, she must return to one of the earlier representations that had already proved too weak to suport her great longingsjoyless work. All these various goals are simply Irena's attempt to provide solid satisfaction for some nebulous need for completion, and her movement among them is primarily an attempt to make a choice between only two things; love and work. Tusenbach is a watered-down version of the Moscow dream; the work that faces Irena at the end of the play is her earlier dream of sacrifice and service stripped of all its glamour. But Irena painfully learns that neither love nor work is the answer; neither complete fulfillment nor complete self-denial is possible . In short, there is no adequate outlet for her energy. All through the action Irena had had to accept smaller and smaller goals, while her need has grown bigger and bigger. The ending of the play does not indicate that she has been left with nothing; she must be left with something more to lose. What she has left doesn't seem worth the losing, but the pattern has been established, and lose it she will. So the end of the play is really the end of nothing at all-there is no end, just continuation and repetition. We know what will happen. Olga's headaches...