Gooseberries, Anton Chekhov - John Freedman (essay date 1988)
John Freedman (essay date 1988)
SOURCE: "Narrative Technique and the Art of Story-telling in Anton Chekhov's 'Little Trilogy'," in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 53, No. 1, January, 1988, pp. 1-18.
[In the following essay, Freedman attributes the lack of critical consensus concerning Chekhov's political and social views to the author's maintenance of "a distinction between his own opinions and those of his characters." Freedman demonstrates how this distinction functions in "The Man in a Shell," "Gooseberries," and "About Love."]
The elusiveness of Anton Chekhov's art has caused no end of confusion among critics and readers ever since he began to publish serious literature in the latter half of the 1880s. The socially oriented critical industry of Russia of the late nineteenth century was alternately baffled and outraged by what it perceived to be an unprincipled, immoral writer. In time, Chekhov came to be known as the bard of twilight...
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