Waiting and Russian Utilitarianism in Chekhov's Three Sisters

Naser Najafi Shabankare Mr. PhD Candidate Department of English Literature, Shiraz University, Fars province, Iran
Amrollah Abjadian Dr. Full Professor of English Literature Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Shiraz University, Fars province, Iran

Abstract

Waiting is the central theme in Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Exploration of the theme of waiting and its attributes with regard to the historical and social discourses at the time of play’s writing is the main focus of the present article. The absurd waiting for future and its manifestation in different characters of the play is brought under scrutiny in the first part of the play. Furthermore, in order to delineate an explanation of the purposeless waiting, Foucault’s concept of episteme helps to highlight the dominant discourses in the Russian society, including utilitarianism and pessimism which shape such depiction of waiting. The concept of episteme, as defined by Foucault can further elaborate the nature of waiting in Chekhov’s Three Sisters and the causes that make such waiting a useless, senseless and devoid act.

Keywords: Chekhov, Three Sisters, Waiting, Foucault, Episteme

Absurd Waiting for the Future

Considering the central theme of waiting in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, the present article is an attempt to add a new type of analysis of the play with an eye on Foucault’s ideas of episteme and social discourse in order to shed more light on the impacts of social factors in the formation of this play. Absurd waiting, in contrast to the previous examples of literary figures waiting for a better future, like Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey, is the result of episteme at the time of its writing. Three Sisters depicts the meaningless lives of three sisters whose only hope is to leave their city one day and head towards Moscow. Therefore, the only action on their part is waiting for the future to come and bring about change, much like the two tramps in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

The play can be studied with regard to the major theme of waiting that is interwoven within the structure of the play. Chekhov’s drama is the one which “repudiates progress and solution as it repudiates active ‘plot’, the literary procedure that most centrally embodies the movement from present to the future” (Gilman, 1972, 145). Chekhov incorporates the absurdity not in the surrounding situations, like that of Beckett, but rather in the characters’ inability to deal with their problems. The sisters have no obstacle on their way to Moscow; however, they are not moving anywhere.

Episteme of Russian Pessimism

The absurdity sensed in the passive waiting of the sisters in Chekhov’s play is a desire to go back to the glorious past the family has had in Moscow. Thus, the absurd waiting for a better future is embodied in form of a city, Moscow. The theme is a result of historical and social events of the time, according to Foucauldian interpretation. Foucault does not merely reject the ideological use of history. In The Order of Discourse, Foucault defines episteme as a historical a priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses and thus represents the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch.

The Three Sisters has been received as the play which abounds with pessimist ideas towards life and its meaning. The characters and their long speeches do not picture a hopeful life, not only for themselves but also for the next generations to come. The city in which the play is set is a rural setting far away from the metropolitan culture “…with a rising bourgeoisie, but in rural surroundings” (Whyman, 2011, 22).

The Role of Scientific Ideas and Utilitarianism

At the university as a doctor Chekhov also encountered new scientific ideas permeating his epoch with the work of evolutionists Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Whyman (2011) asserts that like most of his colleagues at that time, Chekhov had adopted a materialistic view of man and nature. He was deeply interested in Darwin’s work. He rejected scientism, and also Social Darwinism. He was mainly against the ideas of the survival of the fittest stating that on the basis of such assumptions, human race should be naturally moving towards a progressive future.

These discourses eventually shaped Chekhov’s mind making him stage passive waiting, stagnation, ennui, depression and lack of any hope in a bright future in action in his Three Sisters. Chekhov’s close examination of the certain ideals in life, such as romantic love essential to fulfillment in life ends up mostly in disappointment.

Conclusion

Theme of waiting in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters resembles the one staged in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Both plays express the waiting in the play’s major characters, waiting for Godot to come and waiting to go to Moscow. The ultimate result in both is the same, ‘they do not move’. However, the point of difference appeared to be the degree of self-knowledge achieved at the end of each play. Envisioning a better future hope in the characters is linked to the dominant discourses of the time. Chekhov investigates the dominant discourse of the time along with the ideals of the Russian intelligentsia, utilitarianism, utopianism, nihilism and the pessimism coming out of the disillusionment of the ideality. The investigation of passive, absurd waiting in Chekhov’s Three Sisters in accordance with the episteme of the time, as defined by Foucault, reveals the bilateral relationship between literature and history once again.

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