The Lady With The Pet Dog
Uploaded by billybob@aol.com on Sep 14, 1999
In reading the short story The Lady With The Pet Dog by Anton Chekhov and A Respectable Woman by Kate Chopin one can see key similarities of the two works. The short story by Anton Checkov deals with a man and a woman who are both married but regardless of this fact they fall in love with each other and have a secret affair. The short story by Kate Chopin deals with a married woman who is tempted to have an affair with one of her husbands friends, but she resist unlike the characters in The Lady With The Pet Dog. Both of the works deal with the fact that each of the characters are involved in committed relationships, but they are tempted to cheat in their relationships. The characters in the short story The Lady With The Pet Dog fall in love with each other and have an affair regardless of the fact that both of the individuals are married. A lady arrives in town with a little white dog, which would give her her name initially since no one knew of her true identity. "She walked along, always wearing the same beret and always with the white dog no one knew who she was and everyone called her simply 'the lady with the pet dog'"(194). The man that has an acute interest in this young woman is named Dmitrich Gurov who is married with a daughter twelve years old, and two sons away at school. He is dissatisfied to say the least with his present situation and his marriage to his wife. "...while he privately considered her of limited intelligence, narrow-minded, dowdy, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home"(294). This man would often cheat on his wife because he is unhappy and thought very little of his wife. "He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago-had been unfaithful to her often and, probably for that reason, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked of in his presence used to call them 'the inferior race'"(194).
When this man seen a new woman in his town he decides to introduce himself and find out about the lady with the pet dog. As the two of them become closer and closer the relationship becomes more serious. They often walked in the park together which made their friendship grow stronger each day....