The Cherry Orchard is told from the point of view of Madame Lyuba Ravensky. This being a play, she does not narrate the action, but it is to her perspective that the reader is most tethered throughout the course of the story. She is a suitable point-of-view character for the audience to relate to because she holds a great deal of emotional stock in the cherry orchard and estate at stake.

For her, the cherry orchard and the estate are symbols of an idyllic past divorced from the complications of the present. She has lost a son and spouse and recently fled from a lover in Paris to return home to Russia. By holding onto the estate, she believes she is also holding onto the possibility that she can return to an old way of living. However, time passes anyway, and it is made clear that her unwillingness to let go will not prove beneficial to anyone. By refusing to tear down the orchard to make room for cottages to rent, Ravensky loses her estate.

Ravensky's point of view allows the audience to see why losing even a mere cherry orchard could be so significant to someone. Another perspective would not have had the same sense of an old order passing away as Ravensky's does.