were warm and quivering. He felt a pity for this life, still so warm and exquisite, but probably soon to fade and drrop like his own. Why did she love him so? Women had always believed him different from what he really was, had loved in him not himself but the man their imagination pictured him, a man they had sought for eagerly all their lives. And afterwards when they discovered their mistake, they went on loving him just the same... Time had passed, he had met one woman after another, become intimate with each, parted with each, but had never loved. There had been all sorts of things between them, but never love.

Thus we can see that the mirror becomes a symbol of self-understanding in the short story. Literally, Gurov sees himself, but symbolically, the vision of himself triggers an important epiphany that moves beyond his physical appearance to how he has led his life and his interactions with others. Seeing himself for who he really is moves him from treating Anna like just another casual seduction to realising that he was in love with her "properly, thoroughly," and that this was the first time in his life that he had experienced this.

A symbol can refer to a particular object, character or action, and this excellent short story contains a number of different symbols that can be considered to be both cultural and, at the same time, universal. This is perhaps most clearly seen when Gurov returns to Moscow after spending his holidays with Anna Sergeyevna away from the city. Although initially he anticipates the joys he will experience again in his home city and feels that he will quickly forget Anna Segeyevna, he finds instead that his recent experience with her only serves to highlight the way that the activities that he and his friends engage in point towards a massive emptiness and inability to communicate about what is really important. Note what the author says in the following quote:

The rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it--just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.

The activities of Gurov and his contemporaries--the gambling, the eating and the drink--are symbolic of a bigger and more disturbing kind of emptiness that Gurov finds very oppressive and is something that he feels entrapped by. This is of course a very important symbol as it makes him relish the freedom that he finds in his relationship with Anna Sergeyevna. This is a universal symbol as every generation engages in a series of similar activities to prevent them dwelling on their own emptiness.

The theme of isolation in “The Lady with the Pet Dog” is portrayed through darkness and silence that often obscures the characters from each other and through lonely images associated with travel. On the night that Anna and Dmitri first sleep together, they go to the harbor to watch a ship come in. The ship takes a long time to arrive, and by the time it docks it is “too dark to see people’s faces” (5). The wind dies away and the people from the ship depart so that it is still, silent, and pitch black when he suggests they go back to Anna’s room.

Later, when Anna goes home to take care of her sick husband, Dimitri stands on the train platform: “The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness.” Again, there is a lone transport vehicle, silence, and darkness, separating the characters.

Even in the final scene when it seems they may finally find a way to be together, the blocking creates a sense of separation. Anna keeps her back to Dmitri so that he can’t see her face. When he goes to her at the window, he looks not at her, but at himself. He notices that he looks old and realizes that women never see him as he sees himself: “He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination” (19).

A good example of how Chekhov builds isolation through imagery in "The Lady with the Pet Dog" is found in the very beginning of the story where he uses imagery of isolation to set both the tone and mood (i.e., atmosphere) of the story. First of all, the reader is told "It was said." Ivan didn't say to Anna. Petrovich didn't say to Andreovich. It was said. Immediately, Chekhov has created a image of distance and anonymous people who talk at some unspecified place and some unidentified time in some indefinite conversation where it was said that a new person had arrived at Yalta.

The new person is then seen from a remote distance "walking on the sea-front," thus establishing a buffer of unapproachability and isolation around this new arrival, a buffer that works both ways as no one approaches her and she approaches no one across the expanse of the sea-front. Even the Pomeranian dog "running behind her" confirms the distance and isolation; had the dog run with her or beside her, Chekhov would have created the possibility and expectation of approachability and the story would have been a different story.

That the new arrival always is seen in gardens--where people are kept at a distance by rows of flowers or bushes in flower beds and by hedges building foliage walls--or in open public squares--where numbers of people are spread about without connection between them--builds another layer of distance and isolation around the characters. Even Gurov's interactions with other people embeds the theme of isolation within the text. With men he is distanced and bored. With his wife he is frightened, having no desire to be in his home, which in someways describes the ultimate isolation: his home is where he desires isolation and distance.

The difference you have noticed most likely is due to the differing interpretations of the story by the translators. I have seen the title itself rendered into English as "The Lady with the Pet Dog," "The Lady with the Dog," "The Lady with the Little Dog," and "The Lady with the Lapdog." I do not believe that the dog symbolizes anything in particular. It was created to give the female character a reason for taking so many walks along the promenade and also to give Gurov a convenient way to strike up an acquaintance. He makes the little dog bark at him. Anna Sergeyevna apologizes for her dog's behavior. This allows them to enter into a conversation.

The story opens with an admirable sentence, which has been translated in many different ways. My recollection is that it is something like this:

They were saying that a new visitor had appeared on the promenade, a lady with a pet dog.

This makes it easy to identify Anna as a newcomer when Gurov sees her with the little dog. It also illustrates how boring the resort is, and it suggests how bored Gurov himself must be, if everybody makes conversation out of the fact that a new visitor has arrived and that she has a pet dog. Furthermore, the sentence suggests that the setting is a summer resort with a promenade along a body of water, and it would probably suggest Yalta to Russian readers. If Gurov had not been feeling so bored at Yalta, he would not have tried to strike up an acquaintance with this woman with the intention of seducing her just for the sake of having something to do and a means of passing the time. The moral of the story has to do with the serious consequences of frivolous behavior. Gurov not only brings suffering upon himself, but he makes the poor woman feel wicked, frustrated, and confused.

Perhaps it might be said that the tiny dog symbolizes the incident itself. This toy dog brings two humans together and changes their lives irrevocably. When it starts barking at Gurov, it might be imagined that the dog is giving him a warning to stay away from Anna. At the same time, it could be asserted that the dog symbolizes its owner's loneliness and consequently her accessibility and vulnerability. Women often keep little dogs for companionship. The dog seems to drop out of the picture completely after it has served its purpose in bringing the man and woman together.