The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard is a naturalistic play set in early twentieth century Russia. Act I opens with Lopakhin and the maid Dunyasha waiting for Ranyeskaya, her daughter Anya and her brother Gayev to return to their estate. We discover in the first act that Lyuba has lost all her money and the cherry orchard must be sold to pay their debts. Lopakhin, who grew up on the estate as a son of a serf, suggests destroying the orchard to build summer homes, which Lyuba and Gayev strongly refuse. In Act II, some weeks have passed and the characters are at a picnic. They touch on Varya’s future engagement to Lopakhin, the telegram from Lyuba’s parisian lover and the future of the orchard. In Act III we are back at the family estate. Lopakhin has bought the estate at it’s auction, meaning that he will destroy the cherry orchard. Ranyevskaya is devastated and the act ends with Anya consoling her. In Act IV, all the characters say good bye to the house. Trofimov and Anya are excited about the future. Lyuba and Gayev are distraught. Everyone leaves and the play ends with Firs, the estate’s butler, lying on stage, forgotten.
In all honesty, my first reading of The Cherry Orchard left me very confused. The characters were bizarre, they spoke in strange ways and most importantly, I could not see the depth of the play. To begin understanding it, I researched the history of Russia at that time. Gradually, I started to see connections between the play and Russia in 1903. Every character in the play represents a type of person you would find in early twentieth century Russia. Even the low cherry production of the cherry orchard shows how there was very little food at the time. Each character holds an in depth, psychological view of a certain class in Russia. After discovering this, my second reading of the play revealed lots of hidden gems that intelligently conveyed the situation Russia was in by what the characters said, when previously I could see none of these references.
Chekhov called ‘The Cherry Orchard’ a ‘Comedy in four acts’, however the play changes to a tragedy depending on who we view as the protagonist. If Lopakhin is the lead then the play is a comedy as it begins with the family returning and refusing Lopakhin’s idea. As it progresses the situation becomes more tangled but at the end everything is good as Lopakhin has the estate and has saved Lyuba Ranyevskaya from ruin.
If Lyuba is the lead then the play is a tragedy. As the play begins, she returns home to Russia in the hopes that her situation will get better and she will stay at the estate. Then the estate is threatened with ruin and there is no suitable solution available. As the play goes on Lyuba gets worse as the sound of her thieving lover in Paris starts becoming appealing to her and she lashes out at Trofimov. Then Lopakhin buys the estate; everything is over as she knows that he will destroy the orchard and in her last scene she is weeping with Gayev. She even hears the sound of an axe chopping down her beloved cherry orchard.
In my opinion, I view the play as a mixture of comedy and tragedy. There are comedic moments within the play - when Charlotta is performing and when Yepikhodov is trying to impress Dunyasha. However, there is great sadness in the play, predominantly from Lyuba’s storyline as her whole life is tragic and the play only ends with tragedy for her. The main focus of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ is the change in Russia at that time. They were on the cusp of revolution and some people wanted it to happen and others did not. The result will be good and bad, whatever happens.
In ‘The Cherry Orchard’, all dramatic events happen outside of the play’s action - Grisha’s drowning, Lyuba’s suicide attempt, the selling of the orchard. Therefore we must ask ourselves - What was Chekhov trying to achieve by doing this? Without dramatic action, emphasis is placed on the character’s internal psychological struggles. A good example of this is in Act Three where we are given Lyuba waiting to find out about the sale of the orchard and Lopakhin bringing back the news. By not showing the auction, we are focused on the drama between Lopakhin and Lyuba and each of the character’s internal feelings. Lopakhin is ecstatic, whereas Lyuba is devastated. If Chekhov included the auction then the physical action would have been preeminent. The lack of dramatic action also emphasizes Lopakhin’s impactful speech in Act Three (more on this in Lopakhin’s character analysis).
The Snapping String sound puzzled me. There was no information on the sound in the play so I began to research. The phrase features in the epilogue of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, warning of the revolt to come: ‘“Why, everything is going to ruin. Bribery in the law-courts, in the army nothing by coercion and drill: exile—people are being tortured, and enlightenment is suppressed. Everything youthful and honourable—they are crushing! Everybody sees that it can’t go on like this. The strain is too great, and the string must snap”’.
Lyuba Ranyevskaya embodies the Russian aristocrats who made up just over one percent of the population and yet they owned almost one-quarter of all the land; this is what the cherry orchard represents. The orchard also makes a point that, although the aristocrats own most of the land, they are failing to improve Russia. Chekhov repeatedly references to Lyuba’s excessive money wasting; in Act One Anya says “she orders the most expensive item on the menu. Then tips all the waiters a ruble each”, even though they scarcely have any money left. In Act 2, Lopakhin says he has never come across "such frivolous people as you, such strange unbusinesslike people" like Lyuba and her brother Gayev. Lyuba gives no explanation to her spending other than she cannot help it. She grew up with a vast amount of money so she never learnt it’s importance.
Chekhov is critiquing the idleness of the aristocrats, however Lyuba also has a very generous nature. This is an important part to her character as it is the first thing we hear about her when Lopakhin remembers the time she helped clean him when his father beat him. However, in her life she allows her emotions to rule her as not only does it make her give money away freely, it also clouds her judgment in love. When her old lover in Paris sends her a letter imploring her to return, she confesses to Trofimov she wants to go back, even though the man caused her to attempt suicide and stole her money. She is lonely and she longs for love.
It is because of her strong emotional connections that she cannot give up the orchard, she is too sentimental. This is a reference to the leader of Russia at the time; Tsar Nicholas II. Tsardom was failing. The people wanted a democracy but he simply refused as it would mean abdication. Lyuba’s story saddens in her Act two speech where she reveals how she is so ashamed of her life. She has “thrown money about like a lunatic” and “married a man who made nothing of his life but debts”. She lost her son in a tragic accident and ran away to France, where her situation worsened and ended with her new partner robbing her and leaving for another woman. This resulted in a failed suicide which only left her more ashamed. She returned to Russia as she associated it with her idyllic childhood, however it changes little as at the end of the speech she cries for God’s forgiveness. At the end of the play, the orchard is taken away from her which is symbolic of her past so she has now been stripped of who she was. This is proleptic of the coming revolution and communism, even though Chekhov did not even live to see the 1905 revolution.
At the end of the play, Ranyevskaya will go back to France and into the arms of her Parisian lover. I think she does this because she is driven by her human connections. In a telegram the man says that he is in desperate need of her so him being the one that needs her most, she follows him. Throughout the play she is constantly catering to lesser peoples needs, as she gives money away so easily, so it is inevitable that she would go back to him.
Serfdom was abolished in 1861, freeing Lopakhin’s father, a violent drunkard who beat his son. Lopakhin grew up on the estate and has grown to be a rich businessman. This type of person was common in 1903 because the middle class grew drastically as the industry expanded. However, this has left him with a disillusionment with who he is. Despite looking like a middle class citizen, he still feels like a serf inside. He admits that he cannot even read. In some respects, Lopakhin still acts like a former slave as he does not understand the sentimentality that Lyuba has for the cherry orchard. He cannot regard sentimentality higher than money because of his poor past. The same cannot be said of Lyuba as she grew up with lots of money so does not view it as important.
Lopakhin’s big monologue is an impactful, almost epoch-making moment in the play as it is not only the most dramatic speech, but it also changes all the character’s lives. He cathartically reveals his deepest motives - he wanted the orchard to try to escape his past as a serf. Throughout the play he tells us how he does not fit into himself and other characters still patronize him. In Act One Lyuba makes reference to his lack of refinement as she said that he does not understand that ‘If there is one thing of any interest at all in this whole province ... then it’s our cherry orchard’ after his suggestion of taking the orchard down. Now with the cherry orchard in his possession, he owns the embodiment of his past and can destroy it. Whilst Lopakhin reveals the news of the auction Lyuba begins to cry, but he continues to rejoice. This repels the audience from Lopakhin but then are his actions not just? Lopakhin, who came from a family of slaves, has now restored justice, but Lyuba is left without a home. Lopakhin does, however, still care for Lyuba. After his speech he goes to her side and reminds her that he tried to warn her, tried to help her, and he confesses in an anguished tone “if only it were all over”. In Lopakhin’s first speech, after he reminisces about the time Lyuba helped him when he was a boy, there is a pause. It is after this pause that he reveals that he still feels like a peasant inside. The implication here is that he is having an internal argument between the two different parts of him - the part that might love Lyuba and the part that resents still being a peasant. This shows that his decision to destroy the cherry orchard was tainted because he knew it would be at the cost of Lyuba.
Another question we must ask ourselves about Lopakhin is - Why does he not marry Varya? All the other characters in the play act as if their marriage is inevitable, but it never happens. I think for Lopakhin personally to escape his past, he must cut all ties to it. He has succeeded in tearing down the orchard and the house so it would be ludicrous for him to marry into the family, but it also goes deeper. Lopakhin worked hard to transform from a serf to a wealthy merchant and he feels he can do better than a low-born woman who, even though Ranevskaya has adopted her, is still essentially a domestic. There is also always the question whether Lopakhin is really in love with Lyuba. However, it is clear that it could never happen because he placed his attachment to serfdom over how he feels for Ranyevskaya.
The was great socio-economic imbalance in Russia but Tsar Nicholas II failed to change anything, he busied himself with menial tasks instead of facing the larger problems. Petya Trofimov represents the revolutionary parties that planned to overthrow the Tsar. Trofimov is passionately future obsessed “All the things that are beyond its reach now will one day be brought close and made plain”. He sees that there is wrong in society and wants to change it, “all we have to do is...bend all our strength to help those who are seeking the truth”. His speech in Act Two is as if he is speaking to the people and trying to rile them up to see the truth of corrupt Russia. The responses to his speech are also very telling of how the different classes approached the resistance. Lopakhin, the middle class, says that he has worked hard to be where he is today and the peasants are not so worthy of the help that Trofimov thinks they deserve and Ranyevskaya offers only a few words, clearly dismissing Trofimov’s argument. This shows how ignorant the upper class were of the problems in Russia.
Trofimov is similar to Lopakhin as he does not value beauty highly, but instead of money, he values truth more. That is why Trofimov views the cherry orchard as a symbol of the dehumanization of the serfs that people, like Ranyeskaya, controlled. It embodies the aspects of Russia that Trofimov wants to change, the old traditions that need to be eradicated for progress to be made, instead of the beauty and sentimentality that Lyuba ties it with.
Trofimov is frequently referred to as ‘The Eternal Student’. Chekhov calls him this because he is intelligent but immature. Ranyevskaya says that he has no worldly experience. This may be a direct criticism of the revolutionary parties at the time, particularly of the Socialist Revolutionaries. They had the same ideas as Trofimov but they were too scattered and had no core leadership.
Chekhov presents Gayev as a child. He plays pool, he loves sweets and cannot even dress himself. Firs is always chastising him for putting on the wrong items of clothing. I think what Chekhov is trying to show here is that Gayev, the upper class, has been spoilt. He has never had to make any difficult decisions as he has been coddled his whole life. Therefore, he is not prepared for the loss of the cherry orchard. All his ideas to save it involve marrying Anya off to a rich man or trying to get money from a relative, it does not occur to him that he should work to get money. All this points to his juvenility, Gayev himself makes reference to it in Act One “I’m fifty-one already, strange as it seems”.
He is incredibly immature when it comes to peasants. He likes to think of himself as a great patron of the poor; “It’s no accident that your ordinary peasant loves me”. In reality, in Act Two, when a passer-by crosses his path and asks for directions, Gayev is short and uncomfortable with him. When the man asks for money he allows Ranyevskaya to give him ten rubles, money that she cannot afford to give away. When the man exits he says that his “hands are shaking”. This is a reference to the Tsar as he said that he ‘loved’ all his subjects, however the majority of them were starving whilst he lived in a palace. Gayev is only comfortable with peasants who fit the mould of the past. Peasants that do not talk of how “falsehood rules” and “evil triumphs”. This is because the upper class are not accustomed to change, especially now when their luxurious lives are being threatened.
Gayev is frequently making lengthy speeches about random subjects. In Act One he thanks a bookcase “which for more than a hundred years now has been directed towards the shining ideals of goodness and of truth”, halfway through he even begins to cry. This would have no importance without context. When he is saying this, he is thinking about the whole estate and the family. Lopakhin has reminded him that the estate will need to be sold so his speech gives a conclusion to a life that he knows will soon be gone.
One quote that Gayev said stuck firmly in my mind. In Act One he swears to not let the estate be sold and we may call him “a low, dishonourable fellow if I let it go to auction!”. Not only is it ironic because Gayev even goes to the estate’s auction, but it is also a comment that Chekhov is making on the upper class and by extension, Tsar Nicholas II. The auction could represent the revolution that the Tsar swore to prevent, however he changed nothing in Russia for the better, only for the worse.
All the characters in the play are almost besotted with Anya. Gayev calls her his “angel”, Varya calls her “pet” and at the end of Act One Trofimov whispers to her “My sunshine! My springtime!”. Chekhov did this to show that Anya is what the older generation want to be; young. She has not yet experienced life and has choices ahead of her, not in a regretful past. This is Anya’s greatest purpose in the play as she is a small character, however there is one substantial change that occurs for her.
In Act One she still loves the orchard as her mother does. By the end of the play her view has changed dramatically. Under the influence of Trofimov, she has come to realise what the cherry orchard represents in the grand scheme of things. It is no longer the idyllic centre of her childhood but a symbol of her family’s oppressive past. She is kind, like her mother, as she comforts Lyuba when she is crying about losing the estate but at the end, she is looking forward to a new life, leaving her past behind. Anya embodies hope within the play.
Sadly, Varya, the adopted daughter of Lyuba, is not adored and complimented as Anya is. She is not originally from a rich family and does not have the easy life that Anya has. Whilst Ranyevskaya is away, wasting her money and acting foolishly, Varya carried the responsibilities of the whole estate. Losing the estate will affect her most as she will lose her job as the estate’s manager, and without any money or a husband, she will be helpless. Varya loves Lopakhin but he never proposes to her. She consoles herself by saying that it is only because he is too busy and too concerned with his work. She has a good work ethic and is a very practical woman, however she is bossy. When Lyuba returns home, Varya tries to keep Trofimov away as to not upset Lyuba and then gets everyone out when it is late: "Well, then, gentlemen. Past two o’clock. Time to be saying goodbye". She has good intentions at heart but nonetheless, she is still overbearing. She is obviously suffering from the pressure of all of this as she muses over leaving to retreat in Kiev or Moscow and how she would “just keep walking and walking” away from the estate and her life there.
Firs embodies the past. Chekhov makes him deaf and senile showing how the old-fashions in Russia are fading away as the coming revolution draws nearer. He is forever musing about how the estate used to be prosperous and how Russia was better before the emancipation of the serfs. Firs is loyal and caring towards his masters but he is close-minded. He does not see the suffering that the serfs endured and the suffering that the peasants are still enduring in 1903. As the estate falls into decline, Firs becomes an issue for Lyuba to solve. He is left in the hands of Yasha, who is fickle and disloyal. Yepikhodov says that it is time for Firs to ‘meet his fathers’, meaning it is time for him to die. Chekhov is saying here that it is time for the past to be the past as Russia needs revolutionising. At the end, Firs has been forgotten. It is almost heartbreaking as he was the most loyal to the estate and his masters have not even spared the time to check that he his safely in hospital.
Lyuba’s landholding neighour, Boris Semyonov-Pishchik, provides more context to Ranyevskaya’s estate’s struggles. He begs Lyuba for money so we know that the community of landowners have the same financial strains, not just Ranyevskaya. The difference between Pishchik and Lyuba is that Pishchik is far more relaxed and humorous. He swallows all of Lyuba’s pills and makes a joke about him being like a horse is useful. The most important difference, however, is that he is willing to give up his land to Englishmen to save himself financially, whereas Lyuba relentlessly clings to her sentimentality. Pishchik is not proud like Ranyevskaya and Gayev are, which is the trait that saves him.
Yepikhodov is a clown and provides the play with comic relief from the underlying dark storyline. His own life is a joke as he is an accountant with no money. He is ridiculed by his piers as they refer to him as ‘Disasters’, because of his frequent mishaps. His story is comedic but tragic. He is desperately in love with Dunyasha, but she is infatuated with Yasha. Yepikhodov’s attempts to win her over are amusing but sad. In Act Three he tries to mimic Yasha’s insolence by defying Varya and “parade[s] around the drawing room as [he] were a guest”. His attempts are childish but endearing. Yepikhodov has a good ending as Lopakhin leaves him in charge of the estate. This is odd however as Yepikhodov is not the perfect candidate, considering he is nicknamed ‘Disasters’. Chekhov is making a final comment on the fall of the elegant past as the brash future approaches.
Dunyasha is a maid in Ranyevskaya’s estate. She makes herself look like a lady, she does her hair like one and dresses like one, provoking Lopakhin to chastise her for not being in her place. It is clear that Dunyasha has succumbed to the appeal of higher class and has forgotten her own. This is why she denies Yepikhodov, she thinks she is above him because he acts like a fool, not like the ‘gentlemanly’ Yasha. Dunyasha’s love for Yasha acts as an appendage to his character as he exploits her. Not only is she vain, but she is also naïve and foolish when it comes to love. She tells Lopakhin of Yepikhodov’s feelings for her and then straight after, goes to tell Anya who is extremely uninterested as she is worrying about far worse things. The juxtaposition of Dunyasha’s gossiping and Anya’s worries makes Dunyasha look self-absorbed. It is obvious that in the end, Yasha will leave, which he does. Yet, she is still hopeful that he will “write to [her] from Paris”, and she proclaims her love for him, however he only busies himself with his suitcase, ignoring Dunyasha.
Yasha is Ranyevskaya’s footman, returning with her from Paris. Yasha is the most unlikeable character in the play. He is pretentious, freeloading and arrogant. Firs says that before the serfs were emancipated, the peasants kept away from the masters and the masters kept away from the peasants, but Yasha has weaseled his way into a obscure new class. In Act four some of the peasants have come to the estate to say farewell and Yasha says that “they’re a decent enough lot, if you want my opinion. They’re just not very bright”, pretending as if he is not one of them. This is why he wants to go back to Paris, he resents being connected with his peasant family and thinks he can escape it if he leaves. The fact that Yasha yawns all the time even further illustrates the fact that he thinks he is above everyone else, Russia included as he says he is finished with the uncivilised world of Russia. Perhaps the worst part of Yasha’s character is his exploitation of Dunyasha. He is clearly using her as even the first time he embraced her, he looked round to see if anyone could see him as he does not want to be associated with her.
Charlotta is Anya’s governess. She used to be a traveling performer with her parents, but when they died, she was taken in by a German woman and educated. She has no papers so she does not even know how old she is, leaving her with a longing for a family. She has no identification with the past, presenting the complete opposite of Lyuba and Gayev. Her lack of attachments make her free and this may make us think that she is happier than Ranyevskaya, but she is even more unfulfilled and lonely. She admits that she longs to talk to someone but she has no one. Chekhov is showing us here that having no attachments, is as bad and if not worse than having too many. Though she is lost, she is eccentric. She entertains the other characters and is skillful and funny.
There are a few smaller parts in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ but the points Chekhov makes through them are extremely important. The guests at the party are just there to indicate how the aristocratic society is in decline and how Firs is disgusted at the change because people of importance used to attend the estate’s parties and common people have replaced them.
The most poignant one for me was the Passer-by. He does not even have a name but he reveals a lot about the character’s and the context. When he arrives, Varya overreacts by screaming, showing the shock of the truth of Russia, Lopakhin angrily tells him to leave when he asks for money, showing how Lopakhin detests peasants and how he thinks that they should work to get money. Lyuba gives him money, showing how the upper class and by extension the Tsar, do not know how to solve the problems in Russia. The man is a reminder of the land outside of the aristocrat’s dreamy world and a prophet of the future revolution.
