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| Setting
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In some ways setting is the most intuitively accepted "reality" in literature, perhaps more so than plot or character. We have many beliefs in the modern era and one of the most deeply ingrained is our belief in the importance of context or location. Once we think the events are taking place in the K-Mart parking lot, then the story has what is called "verisimilitude" or the appearance of truth or reality. When we talk about "setting" in our own lives, we hardly ever use the term, "setting." Instead we talk about "environment" or "surroundings" or "context" or how we "need some space" or a "change of scene." We think that the location of our homes is so important we spend thousands on the right address or community. We think a vacation or a trip Florida or to the wilderness can alter our temperament or attitudes. Some of us are morning people; some like the night. In some ways, if we define setting as all the factors of time and place and culture that surround and affect us, we might agree that setting becomes everything. But what is it in a story? Certainly, we can talk about a story's setting in terms of geographic location, historical time period, and class or social setting. It also has to do with time of day, season of the year, and simple locations like out of doors, or indoors, or specific rooms indoors. We can also speak of setting in ways more tied to the events of the story. Is the setting static or does the story move from scene to scene through rooms, across seasons, or over great geographic distances? The point is that all of these aspects make for differences. When we try to understand setting we think about what that difference might be. Setting in Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog In Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog, we have one of the most respected authors and stories in the history of literature. If you have not read this story, you should do so now. As you focus on setting in this story, should we assume that you have spent some time working out its plot, point of view, and characterization? The knowledge you gain is becoming cummulative. To some extent, you always combine all the elements in your processes of interpretation as you read, but before you isolate setting as an element, you should be confident you understand what happens in the story, what you think of the characters, and how the characters and events have been presented to you by the narration. In your rereading of Chekov's story, you may feel you are being asked to think about questions which are too subtle for the initial stages of reading. How can we know the implications of placing the story initially in Yalta, for example? Probably you have not been there, I would wager, and definitely not at the turn of the century. How many readers who are not local have definite knowledge of the appearance of Yalta, much less the customs, attitudes and mores of middle class life in turn of the century Russian society? Yet contemporary American readers do know something of semi-tropical vacations for people who need to, as we say, "get away from it all." Yalta is still a tourist site. In fact, for a tourist's view, go to Brad Templeton's home pages to take a tour if his pages are still running. <http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/europe/yalta/> Take a look at the image on this page or Templeton's images of the "groyne" where they watched the ships come in, to get a sense of where Gurov and Anna may have first kissed. What is a "groyne" anyway?? It is what we might call a break-water or obstacle built out into a flow of water to keep sand from accumulating. Is it where the large ships docked? We cannot be sure. But they do go from there as evening falls to her hotel room. Here is another page from a different site (this one written in broken English, but then hey, how's your Russian?). I like it for the four pictures: click on them. The first is for the Hotel Oreanda. Did her hotel look like this one? Recall that Gurov and Anna "drive to Oreanda" after their first encounter in her hotel room. I am guessing that it is a scenic area, perhaps on a mountain side such as the one in picture three. The Templeton pictures also give you a sense of the view they may have been after. Do these images help you imagine these places? Do you see how the story shifts between very public places and then to a private interior hotel room? That happens again in the latter two sections. How do you imagine Moscow in the fall and winter, on the other hand? You might search the web for images as I did for Yalta. (I use the image search in Google.com.) Another aspect of this story's historical and cultural setting is the general climate of suppression regarding any direct mention of sexual activity. Literature written in 1899 simply would not refer to sex explicitly. Chekov leaves it to the reader to fill in the gap after paragraph 27 and before Gurov's sudden reflections on the different reactions women have had to him (their "grateful[ness] to him for the happiness he gave them") and the "diffidence" and sense of "consternation as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door" which he now senses in the "attitude of Anna Sergeyevna--. . . to what had happened" (174). Well, what had happened? Chekov never says. Do you assume as I do, that they consummated an adulterous sex act? Anna is clearly disturbed and implores God to forgive her. This definite silence about the events in the hotel room and her reaction to their probable lovemaking are clearly aspects of the ideological and moral attitudes of the time which are incorporated in the story. Her dismay seems extreme to us since women today seem more sexually liberated from socio/cultural or Biblical judgments. What of Gurov's attitudes toward women? Do they seem historically conditioned? Is Gurov "sexist"? If he is, is the sexism any different from what it would be today? This may be another aspect of the setting in its historical/cultural dimension, though a feminist critique of gender repression was common at that time as well. You might want to think about the gender and class stereotypes as part of setting in this story. There are four sections in this short story which contain shifts in setting. The first two sections take place in and around Yalta. They take place in public spaces and in private space--a hotel room. To what extent is their affair an outgrowth of their circumstance--on vacation, in a beautiful place, in circumstances where they can be anonymous and be somewhat uninhibited? Is this not an early version of what is now a modern commonplace--the vacation romance?
Compare and contrast the public and private settings in parts 3 and 4 with 1 and 2. Notice how Moscow's "winter routine" precisely contrasts with the vacation resort atmosphere. Notice how Gurov's imaginings of Anna persist and undermine his satisfaction with his surroundings. Chekov is quite clear that memories of Anna "haunted" him and that the images were inflated in the memory: "she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer than he had been in Yalta" (177). Eventually she is everywhere in the setting: "she peeped out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner--he heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress" and he ends up searching for her in the streets (177 par 64). Here his love seems to be synonymous with her inflation into the atmosphere. As this, shall we say, obsession with her grows, his satisfaction with his family, friends and circumstance sinks lower. And we know what he does--where he goes, how he finds her, what her reaction is. Both their meetings in Part 1 and encounter in Part 3 take place in public and their scenes together are intensified by fear of the emotions of being observed or discovered. Gurov particularly seems intensely aware of others, as their interactions take place. And they seek privacy, again, in hotel rooms. The hotel scene in Part 4 and its events invite comparison and contrast with the hotel room scene in Part 2. This symmetry is an excellent example of plot reoccurrence and divergence discussed earlier on the Plot page. Notice the places where the narrator makes clear the changes Gurov feels. Compare and contrast both Anna's emotions and his reactions to them with those in the earlier hotel scene. Each scene has a key "object" in the setting which Gurov relates to or which tends to correlate in some way with the scenes. Can you pick out the objects? Compare and contrast these moments. What do you make of this? Has Gurov changed? Has Anna changed? Are the changes for the better? What sort of ending is this? Is this a happy ending? What will happen to them? Do you think a "new and spendid life would begin" for them? Should it? Is it possible to imagine a life for them that is not caught up in perpetual isolation from their own "settings"? Suggestions for working with Setting
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