47 pages • 1 hour read
Uncle Vanya
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Background
Authorial Context: Chekhov’s Life and Work
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) is one of the most celebrated Russian writers of all time. He is best known for plays and short stories in which he concisely and convincingly captures the intricacies of human nature. His works often feature a blend of tragedy and comedy, focusing on ordinary lives and the subtle dramas that unfold within them. Critics regard his writing as the pinnacle of 19th-century Russian Realism.
Chekhov’s works were informed and inspired by his own life experiences and observations. Born in Taganrog, Southern Russia, Chekhov and his siblings suffered the tyranny of an abusive Orthodox father who would later serve as a model for hypocritical patriarchal figures in many of Chekhov’s works. Chekhov began writing short comedic and satirical pieces for newspapers to support himself through his final years of schooling while the rest of his family moved to Moscow to escape debtors. He produced an enormous body of work as he finished his education and went on to study medicine in Moscow, financially supporting not only himself but his family too. After graduating as a licensed physician and while working full time as a doctor, Chekhov dedicated himself to writing the serious literary pieces for which he is now best known.
As a doctor, Chekhov worked among the lowest classes of Russian society. He even traveled for several years to write a groundbreaking report named Sakhalin Island (1895) about the cruelties of the Imperial prison colony of the same name. Chekhov suffered from tuberculosis through most of his adult life and spent many of his final years in the isolated countryside for his health. He resented this, and this attitude is reflected in the experiences of the characters of Uncle Vanya. In 1904, Chekhov died of tuberculosis at age 44. To this day, he is venerated as one of Russia’s literary greats.
Although Chekhov’s literary brilliance was recognized and celebrated by his contemporaries, his first forays into theater—The Wood Demon (1889) and The Seagull (1896), for instance—were initially unsuccessful. He consequently avoided playwriting for many years, although he eventually flourished in the medium. Uncle Vanya is a rewrite of his earlier, unsuccessful play The Wood Demon, and it was published approximately a decade after its predecessor. The innovative director Konstantin Stanislavski was instrumental to the success of Chekhov’s plays, also directing The Three Sisters in 1901 and The Cherry Orchard in 1904.
Sociohistorical Context: Change and Turmoil in 19th-Century Russia
Chekhov’s writing falls under Russian Realism, which also includes work like Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. These writers presented a faithful and unvarnished picture of life in Russia at the end of the 19th century. In his work, Chekhov represented the petty hardships and conflicts that dominated the everyday life of his contemporaries, as well as the wider social trends and conditions that affected them.
The late 19th century was a period of significant change, turmoil, and uncertainty across all levels of Russian society. The biggest disruption to the established social order was the Emancipation Reform of 1861 that abolished serfdom—it liberated the peasant class from indentured servitude to the landowning gentry. In addition to this, increasing industrialization and growth in urban centers created a new urban proletariat class. Meanwhile, improvements to Russian higher education resulted in a university-educated intelligentsia that was critical of Russia’s perceived inferiority to its European neighbors. Indeed, the failure of the Russian state to match the rapid cultural, economic, and technological advances of other European powers during the Industrial Revolution saw its international prestige and comparative military power greatly diminished during this period.
Such changes meant that the nobility saw a marked decrease in their established power and prestige in the latter half of the 19th century, leading many of them to lament the end of the old order and favor reactionary economic and social policies. However, the wealth inequality between social classes remained vast, and desperate poverty was endemic among the peasantry and lower classes. This, along with an ongoing lack of effective legislative or democratic reform, contributed to the widespread dissatisfaction that culminated in the 1917 Communist Revolution and Civil War, which saw the established social order violently overthrown in full. Uncle Vanya therefore reflects these social and economic realities of late 19th-century Russia, particularly in terms of the decline of the aristocracy and the frustrations of the intelligentsia.
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