The Lady With The Pet Dog

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The Lady with the Pet Dog In this short story, Chekhov breaks the story down into four parts that portrays the change brought about in Gurov’s heart as he encounters Anna, the Lady with the dog. In the beginning of the story, this character Gurov is an unhappily married man with a daughter and two sons. He is frequently unfaithful and considers women to be of “the inferior race.” While he is vacationing in Yalta, he sees a young lady walking along the seafront with her small dog and goes over to her to have a conversation. This Lady, Anna Sergeyevna, is also vacationing in Yalta while her husband remained at home. And soon enough, Gurov and Anna engage in an affair. For Gurov, Anna brings a softening of the heart that allows him to love for the first time in his life. He’s clearly not happy with his marriage and not happy with his life and maybe that’s why he believes that women are of “the inferior race.” However, that all changed when he falls in-love with Anna. After both of them depart from each other, Gurov thought that he would soon forget about Anna, but he wasn’t. “But more than a month went by, winter came into its own, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he had parted from Anna only yesterday” (110). For the first time in both of their lives, Gurov and Anna actually feels real “love.” He then visits Anna, and they both see each other for the first time since they both departed. Anna is more than shocked to see him. “She glanced at him and turned pale, then looked at his again in horror, unable to believe her eyes” (113). She tells him to leave and that she’ll visit him in Moscow. And she did visit him “once every two or three months” (114). Both are struggling with the fact that they are both married, and especially with Gurov, he has 3 children. In one of their meetings, Gurov catches his reflection in a mirror and

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