First produced: Tri sestry, 1901; first published, 1901 (English translation, 1920)

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Impressionistic realism

Time of plot: Nineteenth century

Locale: Russia

The Story:

On Irina’s name-day, her friends and family call to wish her happiness. It is exactly one year since the death of her father, who was sent from Moscow eleven years before to this provincial town at the head of a brigade. Irina and her sister Olga long to go back to Moscow, and Masha would like to go, too, except that she married Kuligin, whom she once thought the cleverest of men. They all pin their hopes on their brother Andrey now, who is studying to become a professor.

An old army doctor, Tchebutykin, brings Irina a samovar because he loved her mother. Masha’s husband gives her a copy of the history of the high school in which he teaches; he says he wrote it when he had nothing better to do. When Irina tells him that he already gave her a copy for Easter, he merrily hands it over to one of the army men who is calling. Tusenbach and Solyony quarrel half-heartedly because Tusenbach and Irina decided that what they need for happiness is work. Tusenbach never did anything but go to cadet school, and Irina’s father prepared his children only in languages. Both have a desire to labor hard at something.

When Vershinin, the new battery commander, comes to call, he reminds the girls that he lived on the same street with them in Moscow. He praises their town, but they say they would rather go to Moscow. They believe that they are oppressed with an education that is useless in a dull provincial town. Vershinin thinks that for every intelligent person then living, there will be many more later on, and that the whole earth will be unimaginably beautiful two or three hundred years hence. He thinks it might be interesting to relive one’s life to see if one can improve on the first version.

Natasha comes in while they are still sitting at the dinner table. Olga criticizes her dress, and the men begin to tease her about an engagement. Andrey, who cannot stand having her teased, follows her out of the room and begs her to marry him. She accepts.

After their marriage, Andrey loses any ambition he ever had to become a professor; he spends much of his time gambling, trying to forget how ill-bred, rude, and selfish Natasha is. Irina, meanwhile, takes a job in the telegraph office, and Olga teaches in the high school. Tired when they come home at night, they let Natasha run the house as she pleases, even to moving Irina out of her own bedroom so that Natasha and Andrey’s baby can have it.

Vershinin falls in love with Masha, though he feels bound to his neurotic wife because of his two daughters. Kuligin realizes what is going on but cheerfully hopes Masha still loves him. Tusenbach, afraid that life will always be difficult, decides to give up his commission and seek happiness in a workingman’s life. Vershinin is convinced that, by living, working, and struggling, people can create a better life. Because his wife periodically tries to commit suicide, he looks for happiness not for himself but for his descendants.

Andrey asks Tchebutykin to prescribe for his shortness of breath, but the old doctor swears he forgot all the medical knowledge he ever knew. Solyony falls in love with Irina, who will have nothing to do with him. He declares that he will have no happy rivals.

One night, all gather to have a party with mummers who are to come in. Natasha decides that the baby is not well and calls off the party at the last minute. Then Protopopov, the chairman of the rural board, comes by with his carriage to take Natasha riding while Andrey sits reading in his room.

A short time later, fire destroys part of the town. Olga gives most of her clothes to those whose homes were burned and, after the fire, invites the army people to sleep at the house. Natasha berates Olga for letting her old servant sit in her presence and finally suggests that Olga herself move out of the house. The old doctor becomes drunk because he prescribed incorrectly for a woman who died. After the fire, people want him to help them, but he cannot. In disgust, he picks up a clock and smashes it.

Masha, more bored than before, gives up playing the piano. She is disgusted, too, because Andrey mortgages the house in order to give money to Natasha. Everyone but he knows that Natasha is having an affair with Protopopov, to whose rural board Andrey was recently elected.

Irina, at twenty-four, cannot find work to suit her, and she believes she is forgetting everything she ever knew. Olga persuades her to consider marrying Tusenbach, even if he is ugly; with him Irina might get to Moscow. Masha confesses that she is in love with Vershinin and that he loves her, though he is unable to leave his children.

Andrey berates his sisters for treating his wife so badly and then confesses that he mortgaged the house that belongs to all four of them. He so hoped they could all be happy together. Irina hears a report that the brigade will move out of town. If that happens, they will have to go to Moscow because no one worth speaking to will be left.

On the day the first battery is to leave, the officers come to say their farewells to the sisters. Kuligin tells Masha that Tusenbach and Solyony had words because both of them were in love with her and she promised to marry Tusenbach. Kuligin eagerly anticipates the departure of the brigade because he hopes Masha will then turn back to him. Masha is bored and spiteful. She feels that she is losing, bit by bit, whatever small happiness she has.

Andrey wonders how he can love Natasha when he knows she is so vulgar. The old doctor claims that he is tired of their troubles, and he advises Andrey to walk off and to never look back. Nevertheless, the doctor himself, who is to be retired from the army in a year, plans to come back to live with them because he really loves them all.

Irina hopes to go off with Tusenbach. Olga intends to live at the school of which she is now headmistress. Natasha, expecting to be left in sole charge of the house, plans all sorts of changes to wipe away the memory of the sisters’ being there. Andrey wonders how his children can possibly overcome the influence of their mother’s vulgarity.

Tusenbach fights a duel with Solyony, and Tchebutykin returns to tell them that Tusenbach was killed. The sisters are left alone with their misery, each thinking that she must go on with her life merely to find out why people suffer so much in a world that has the potential to be beautiful.

Critical Evaluation:

The Three Sisters, which premiered in January, 1901, is the first play Anton Chekhov wrote specifically for the Moscow Art Theatre. The play was directed by cofounder Konstantin Stanislavsky, the great teacher and originator of a technique of acting, and the cast included Olga Knipper, Chekhov’s future wife, in the role of Masha. Although it was not immediately successful with the critics, The Three Sisters has become the most frequently performed of the Chekhov canon.

Ill with tuberculosis and therefore forced to remain in the warm climate of Yalta, Chekhov instilled much of his own frustration and longing for culture and civilization into the sisters’ dream of returning to Moscow. Olga, Masha, and Irina feel overwhelmed and smothered by the banality of their provincial backwater town. They were educated for a society in which people have an appreciation of language and conversation and perfected a graceful style of living, but that society is fast becoming obsolete. Confused and lacking resources, the sisters search for a fulfilling existence, represented by the dream of returning to Moscow. There, they believe, they can be engaged in activities commensurate with their talents, and life will be meaningful.

The Moscow existence is no more than an idealization of the past, however. Vershinin’s entrance in the first act revivifies the time and environment of their Moscow girlhood, but, as a friend of the sisters’ father, he is a remnant of a past time. The sisters must somehow learn to exist in the changing world of the present. That present is represented by Natasha, who comes from a new middle class and is less educated, less sensitive, and less humane. In fact, she is downright greedy and grasping, one of the few unpleasant characters that Chekhov ever created.

As the skeptical doctor Tchebutykin says, “life is ugly and petty, happiness an illusion, and the only cure for despair is work.” The ideal of work, which in the eyes of Tusenbach and Irina, is the means to fulfillment and the solution to boredom, replaces the dream of Moscow. Irina’s position in the telegraph office is not satisfying, however, and Tusenbach’s management of the brick factory never reaches fruition. The others encounter equal disillusion: Olga’s elevation to headmistress only represents more work, Masha’s love relationship is doomed, and Andrey’s ambitions to become a professor are fantasy. Vershinin’s optimistic claim that life will be better in the future suggests a present of compromise and resignation. Throughout the play, the tension increases between the hope of fulfillment and the disappointment of reality, underscoring Chekhov’s themes of the absurdity of the human condition and the futility of the quest for meaning in life.

The external action of the play concerns the Prozorov sisters’ gradual physical dispossession at the hands of Natasha. Chekhov’s descriptions of the settings, the seasons of the year, and the times of day contribute to this development. Irina’s pleasant name-day party of the first act occurs on the fifth of May; spring and hope are in the atmosphere, although, as Olga remarks, the birches are not yet budding. It is a bright, sunny noontime, and the clock is striking twelve. The action sprawls through the living and dining rooms. The second act occurs on a winter evening. The same setting is now darkened and constricted by the presence of Natasha and her vulgar taste. It is Shrovetide, but the carnival maskers are not permitted in the house. In the third act, Natasha successfully usurps even more space and consigns Olga and Irina to a small bedroom. The time is even later, between two and three in the morning, and outside a fire rages in the town.

In the fourth act, autumn arrives, the cranes are migrating, and the leaves falling, creating a sense of farewell and resignation. Although it is noon again, Chekhov ironically contrasts the scene with the first act by setting it outside, visually conveying that the sisters have been ousted from their home by Natasha and her progeny.

Chekhov’s use of sound effects is particularly notable. Seemingly insignificant by themselves, various mundane sounds echo through the play, not only creating an atmosphere but also commenting ironically on the characters and their situation. In the first production, Chekhov strenuously objected to Stanislavsky’s attempts to add to the effects that were so carefully inserted in the text. There are bells—sleighbells on Protopopov’s troika, chiming bells on the clock, and the anxious alarm bell of the fire—footsteps, tappings, and musical instruments. among them, piano, violin, accordion, and a band. In the first moments of the play, Olga remembers how the band played at their father’s funeral. In the final moments, the band plays more and more softly, as the brigade leaves town and the Prozorovs’ new lives begin. The clock strikes twelve as Olga speaks in the first act, Tchebutykin breaks the clock in the third act just as the dream of Moscow shatters. Masha whistles somberly before meeting Vershinin; afterward they communicate their love through musical phrases. Tusenbach plays the piano in the first scene, and offstage Andrey plays the violin. In the last act, someone plays “The Maiden’s Prayer” on the piano as the hope of Irina’s marriage dies.

Some critics view the sisters as passive victims of social conditions, who lack the aggression and the ingenuity necessary to realize their dreams and to better their lives. Others claim that the sisters strive to resist banality and consider that Masha’s great love, Irina’s decision to marry the baron, and Olga’s acceptance of the headmistress position represent that active resistance.

The Three Sisters is a cleverly crafted, realistic play with neither heroes nor villains and without startling theatrical effects (both the fire and the duel occur offstage). Chekhov creates a group of ordinary people, existing in a particular time and place, whose dreams of a better life are shared by all in any time and place.

Further Reading