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Anton Chekhov `The lady with the dog` and Joyce Carol Oates `The lady with the pet dog`- a comparison of the characters in these two stories

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11 January 2007 "The Lady with the Pet God

A Male Versus Female Approach to an Affair

Taken together the respective approaches of Anton Chekhov and Joyce Carol Oates took while writing "The Lady with the Pet Dog " provide a more complete and much more interesting treatment of an illicit affair between two married individuals than either story provides by itself . On the surface the two stories appear diametrically opposed . Chekhov wrote from a strictly male perspective : the male dominated society

of imperial Russia in 1899 . Oates wrote from the perspective of an educated woman in the United States in 1972 , a time when women were actively making inroads into the male dominated power structure . These great differences suggest why reading the two stories together provides a more poignant view of the affair . Instead of just a simple story such as Chekhov wrote , or just the more complicated female perspective , one is able to explore the affair from the perspective of both males and females

Chekhov wrote from a strictly left-brain approach . The story appears in sequence starting with Gurov 's first hearing about Anna , to their early encounters , their first lovemaking , the time they spent together during the holiday , their separation and return to their respective lives , the reestablishment of their affair and the apparent projection of the affair into the future with no end in sight . Chekhov uses a simple linear approach that allows for no deviation almost as if he were writing a logical or mathematical proof . Oates , on the other hand , chose to write a non-linear story that swirls through time always returning to the moment when Anna 's unnamed lover appears unannounced and apparently unwanted in her normal life with her husband . Oates uses this moment as an anchor or touch point from which she moves back in time to reveal parts of the affair only to return to the anchor and repeat the process moving further back in time with each repetition . Anna sees her lover from the previous August during a concert 's intermission and suffers a panic attack that forces her husband to take her home before the concert has ended . Only then does Oates take the reader back in time to when they said good-bye after driving from Nantucket to Albany so she might return to her husband . She writes of her actions when she returns home after the affair . Then Oates returns to the night at the concert and the liaisons between Anna and her unnamed lover as they recommence their affair . This time Oates takes the reader back to the beginning of the affair . Oates is still not done traveling through time . She returns to the night Anna 's lover appears at the concert then tells of their new affair again , she explores their encounters and their learning to accept that their affair will continue , presumably without end . This more complicated approach concerns itself with the results of the affair...

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