To ensure a winning hand of hearts, one must hold all of the hearts in the deck and the queen of spades, or no hearts at all. Having any number of hearts in between these two extremes puts one at risk of losing the hand and eventually the game. Turgenev's placement of hearts in the opening scene signals to the reader that the play is about the heart, or the game of love, and at the same time it introduces one of the play's guiding organizational structures: dichotomies. Oppositions, contradictions, and contrast dominateA Month in the Country—all or nothing and winning or losing are just the beginning.

By interweaving the conversation about the card game with Natalya and Rakitin's interchange, Turgenev hints that the two lovers might also be considered in light of his structural web of contradiction and opposition. And indeed they can be. The two are very clearly at odds, and their romance is an unconsummated one. At the same time that their love appears to be everything to Rakitin, it seems at times to mean nothing to Natalya. The tension surrounding the couple is obvious in the first scene when they quibble over Rakitin's reading of Monte Cristo.

As the act unfolds, it becomes apparent that Rakitin is caught up in a web of choices and consequences. He must either read or talk, obey Natalya or not, bore her or not, and as the audience later learns, he must decide to leave her or not. Their relationship is a balancing game. At some moments it appears that their affair is one-sided, and then in the next Natalya admits her love for him. Rakitin is aware of the precarious ground on which their relationship treads. He notes, ' 'You know, Natalya Petrovna, the more I look at you today, the less I can recognize you.’’ Contradictions abound even for Rakitin—that which should be most familiar to him becomes unfamiliar and almost unknowable.

When Shpigelski arrives, the oppositions and contradictions continue to grow. Of Verenitsm and his sister Shpigelski proclaims, ‘‘It's my opinion that they're either both mad or both normal, for there is nothing to choose between them.’’ The choices offered by Shpigelski are extremes and as such they fall right in line with the other contradictory oppositions in the play. Natalya does not respond to Shpigelski's assessment; however, her later comment about his story reveals that her reasoning parallels his. When responding to Shpigelski's story about the girl who loves two men, Natalya notes, ‘‘I don't see anything surprising about that: Why shouldn't one love two people at once?’’ As though this were not enough of a contradiction, she goes on to surmise, ‘‘but no, I really don't know .. . perhaps it simply means that one isn't in love with either.’’

The possibility of loving more than one man or no one at all goes hand in hand for Natalya, and in conclusion, she admits that she really just doesn't know what to think. Natalya is confused by what it means to love and almost immediately she adapts an all or nothing mentality. Rakitin echoes her sentiments about the perplexity of love when he ponders their relationship a bit later. He reflects, ‘‘What does all this mean? Is it the beginning of the end, or the end itself? Or is it the beginning, perhaps?’’ Rakitin's question is an appropriate one and it further epitomizes the dichotomies that populate Turgenev' s play. The end and the beginning, though obviously opposite, are indistinguishable to Rakitin, who struggles to discover at which point he finds himself in his relationship with Natalya.

The presence of so many oppositions has a rather curious effect on the overall work. On the one hand, A Month in the Country is a highly charged play riddled with conflict. Natalya experiences a deep personal turmoil as she questions infidelity, to love someone so young, and if she should she act based on her own self-serving interests and marry Vera off to Bolshintsov. Interestingly, however, the contradictory nature of her options and the prevalence of so many other dichotomies in the play also add a feeling of balance to the work. Natalya is tortured and fragmented in terms of her personal loyalties, yet her struggle is set against a backdrop of opposites that create a certain sense of unity. The idea of balance created by opposition is not a new concept. In fact, it traces back to the idea of yin and yang, the Chinese symbol for balance and harmony. This is not to suggest that the conflicted Natalya is in balance because she questions whether she should be unfaithful to her husband, yet it is to suggest that there is a certain sense of wholeness evoked by the presence of so many complementary oppositions in the play. In addition to presenting oppositions and contrasts in the development of the plot and the other characters, Turgenev includes such elements on a thematic level as well. Some of the more notable thematic contrasts he plays upon include young/old, public/private, work/play, truth/ lies, upper class/lower class, and, of personal interest to the playwright, Russia/the West.

The world of opposites that populates A Month in the Country can also be said to swirl around its author. Attempting to draw parallels between Turgenev's fiction and his real life is merely speculative; however, it is intriguing that one of the elements that permeates A Month in the Country also dominated Turgenev's life. In Turgenev: The Novelist's Novelist, Richard Freeborn noted that Turgenev was ‘‘a man of extraordinary, innate contradictions.’’ Further he added, ‘‘During his lifetime Turgenev acquired many reputations. He was a political figure whose views received approval and sympathy in some quarters, disdain and outright rejection in others, a man who regarded himself as European in Russia and a Russian in Europe ... a man, finally, who never married but devoted the greater part of his adult life to a seemingly unrequited passion for a married lady.’’

From his reception by his critics to his political views and his personal preferences, Turgenev was indeed a man haunted by contradiction. Some consider A Month in the Country to be at least somewhat autobiographical, and in that both the author and his work share such a dominant characteristic, one might assume that in an effort to achieve balance in his own life, Turgenev used his fiction as a forum for exploring his own conflicts. Whether A Month in the Country served personal purposes or not is difficult to say; however, from the distance of close to 150 years, one can certainly conclude that Turgenev's use of contradiction and opposition served his craft well. As a man and an artist, Turgenev grappled with the tenuous balance between life's greatest contrasts and while his success in walking this fine line was evident in much of his work, A Month in the Country serves as one of his best examples and as one of his greatest literary achievements.

Source: D. L. Kellett, for Drama for Students, Gale, 1999.

A Month in the Country is a five-act play in prose written by the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev in the period 1848-50. After objections by the censors to some of its overt social criticism, the play was finally passed for publication in 1855. It was performed for the first time in Moscow (at the Maly Theatre) in 1872 and assured of continuing success in the 20th century by a famous Stanislavsky production at the Moscow Arts Theatre in 1909.

The story concerns a young tutor, Aleksey Belyaev, who is hired during the summer to teach the ten year old son of the Islaevs on their country estate. Despite his own mild manner the charming Belaev has a devastating impact on the household. Mme. Islaeva (Natalia Petrovna) vies with her own young ward, Vera, for his attention. Both women fall in love with him but Vera is no match for her protectress. Natalia maneuvers her into an arranged marriage with a ridiculous middle-aged neighbour. Belyaev departs, leaving all of the characters facing changes in their lives. In particular, Rakitin, a close friend of the family who has long been a secret admirer of Natalia, is forced to go away, suspected by her uncomprehending husband of having made advances towards her. Secondary interest, and not a little humour, arises from the down-to-earth love relationship between two middle-aged characters, Dr. Shpigelsky and Lizaveta Bogdanovna.

The play has had an unusual destiny. Its author was reluctant to believe in its quality because of the negative criticism which it received. He went so far as to admit that it was not really a play, but a novel in dramatic form. In fact, a good case could be made in the opposite direction: that Turgenev, with his skill in creating atmosphere, character, and dialogue far exceeding his narrative inventiveness, might be regarded as a dramatist manque. This play has not only remained in the Russian repertory, it has travelled abroad with great success, proving particularly popular on the British stage.

Its major achievement is to have introduced into Russia, half a century too early for the author's own good, a wholly new theatrical genre, the pyschological drama. A Month in the Country is a play in which very little overt action occurs. There are arrivals and departures, one listens to conversations and gains a strong sense of hidden passions and tensions seething just below the surface of events. There are two or three moments of crisis, resolved with words rather than deeds, sufficient to raise an audience's involvement from interest to anxiety. But what is remarkable is the disparity between the radical nature of these developments and the lack of any external adventure or sensation. Ordinary people leading humdrum lives are subjected to turmoil and trauma; it is as if a whirlwind has passed through and blown away their comfortable routine, and no one saw anything happen.

Turgenev's characterization is remarkable. Not ony are the 13 characters extremely realistic, they actually develop and mature during the action of the play, without ever straining credulity. Particularly poignant are the two leading female roles. For all her understated depiction, Vera approaches tragic status and cannot fail to move the spectators as they watch her rapid transformation from girlishness to womanhood, followed by her painful resignation to a hopeless future. As for Natalia, she attracts some degree of sympathy because of her boring marriage and her forceful personality, but she is despicable in her ruthless treatment of the young girl whose interests she is supposed to be protecting. Her villainy is mitigated by a sense of her powerlessness before the forces which take control of her—physical love together with a sense of panic that her youth and beauty are rapidly coming towards their end. She is complex and fascinating. Alongside these leading characters there is much else to sustain the interest: the innocence of Belyaev, the sadly amusing remoteness of Natalia's husband, the bitterness of Rakitin who only now comes to full realization of how empty his life has been. There is a good deal of comic relief, particularly in the exchanges between Shpigelsky and Bogdanovna but also in the character of Shaaf, the German tutor, and the satirical picture of Bloshintsov, Vera's eventual husband-to-be. Productions which play upon the comedy and leave the more serious issues to speak for themselves in Turgenev's restrained manner bring out all the qualities of A Month in the Country, and, by keeping them nicely in balance, tend to be more successful than those which attempt to propel the complex drama explicitly in the direction of tragedy.

The question of Chekhov's debt to Turgenev has never been fully resolved. Chekhov himself denied it and claimed he had not even read A Month in the Country before writing his major plays. This can scarcely be true, as even a glance at the cast lists of this play and Uncle Vanya will reveal. Both plays (and also Balzac's La Maratre from which A Month in the Country derives) involve groupings of characters which are anything but conventional; all three are certainly interrelated. Critics tend either to take for granted a certain influence by Turgenev, or else to deny it almost entirely. The influence seems, however, beyond question, extending as it does to setting, characterization, atmosphere, dialogue, and even perhaps to thematic interest. The outstanding success of Chekhov's psychological drama is itself a vindication of Turgenev's method, which was so unpopular in its day. What is remarkable is the early date at which Turgenev attempted to introduce the Russians to a form of drama which would sweep to popularity half a century later; A Month in the Country was written ten years before Chekhov was even born.

Source: Anthony D. P. Briggs, "A Month in the Country " in The International Dictionary of Theatre, Volume 1: Plays, edited by Mark Hawkins-Dady, St. James Press, 1992 , pp. 531-32.