[In the following essay, Kendle analyzes Chekhov's use of references to horses in The Seagull.]

An elaborate refrain emerges from the apparently random requests for horses in The Sea Gull. As they try, usually unsuccessfully, to secure the horses that promise escape from the boredom and spiritual imprisonment of Sorin's estate, Chekhov's characters deepen the resonance of this refrain. The motif of unavailable horses is introduced humorously as merely another example of the steward Shamreyeff's blundering tyranny over his social superiors, a theme familiar in Chekhov's early plays and still effective in the butler's comic, yet touching, despotism over the weak-witted Protheros in Mary McCarthy's The Group. Though a half-foolish, half-pathetic figure in his nostalgia for the theater of his youth, Shamreyeff rules his domain absolutely. Indeed his absolutism seems partly an attempt to order the present, as his reminiscences are attempts to order his past. But not even the older characters share his interests or his recollections. As Arcadina says, “You keep asking me about someone before the flood—how should I know?” (Act I; all quotations are from The Sea Gull, trans. Stark Young, New York, 1939.) Ironically, Shamreyeff is as trapped as are those characters to whom he denies the horses.

Shamreyeff's tyranny also functions partly as an index to the social and economic ills of the period. If we can believe Sorin's complaint, Shamreyeff's rule is ultimately ineffectual: “… my money goes for nothing. The bees die, the cows die, horses they never let me have.” (Act III) Thus, the imprisonment of various characters on Sorin's estate lacks even an economic justification, and the comic note initially sounded by Shamreyeff awakens sober echoes.

When in Act II Arcadina and Shamreyeff's wife, Pauline, are refused horses for a trip to the neighboring town, Pauline's speech implies the reasons for her request: “He has put the carriage horses in the fields, too. And these misunderstandings happen every day. If you only knew how it all upsets me. It's making me ill; you see how I'm trembling. I can't bear his coarseness.” Though she is partly rationalizing her own frustrated love for Dr. Dorn, Pauline also makes clear her husband's inability to understand the escape impulse that governs some characters. The horses that tantalize others with possibility of freedom become mere field drudges for Shamreyeff, who fails to comprehend the extent to which he is himself trapped by his obsession with the past.

The illusory nature of the freedom attained through escape is made clear on those few occasions when the horses are available. In Act III, horses enable Arcadina and Trigorin to catch the train for Moscow, where she hopes Trigorin will forget his infatuation with Nina, though Trigorin says of his “love”: “What sense, then, is there in running away from it?” And Nina's end-of-act decision to leave for Moscow to become an actress substantiates Trigorin's statement and emphasizes the futility of Arcadina's escape. Arcadina's official explanation for the trip is her concern for Constantine: “Here I am leaving and so shall never know why Constantine tried to kill himself. I have a notion the main reason was jealousy, and the sooner I take Trigorin away from here the better.” Yet, ironically, in removing Trigorin, Arcadina also removes herself and Nina, the two women on whom Constantine depends.

Constantine, one of the few who might profit artistically and emotionally by a permanent remove from the country, must content himself with brief and, significantly, futile excursions to attend Nina's performances in the provinces: “I saw her, but she didn't want to see me, and her maid wouldn't let me in her rooms. I understood how she felt, and never insisted on seeing her. …” (Act IV) To rationalize their failure to help Constantine, Arcadina pleads poverty, and Sorin, though he manages a brief trip of his own, justifies his lack of generosity on the basis of Shamreyeff's mismanagement of the estate.

That the horses generally provide only a mockery of freedom is underlined comically by Sorin's view of his journey:

ARCADINA:
But what's there in town?
SORIN:
Nothing in particular, but all the same. (Laughs) There's the laying of the foundation stone for the town hall, and all that sort of thing.

(Act III)

Sorin, obsessed as he is with the sense of his wasted life, would ultimately rather continue in his trap than anticipate even the excitement of his imminent death. Dr. Dorn's attempt to allay his fears suggests, indirectly, the challenge inherent in a confrontation with death: “The fear of death—a brute fear. The fear of death is reasonable only in those who believe in an eternal life, and shudder to think of the sins they have committed. But you in the first place don't believe, in the second place what sins have you? For twenty-five years you served as State Counsellor—and that's all.” But despite Sorin's frequently-expressed desire for change, he refuses to respond and reveals the limited conception of freedom he envisioned.

The theme of escape is given full orchestration in Act IV, after a partly comic introduction in the talk between Masha and her school-teacher husband, Medvedenko, who wants her to leave Sorin's house and return home to their baby. Masha later tells Pauline that she can forget her love for Constantine if she moves away: “The great thing, Mama, is to be where I don't see him. If only my Semyon could get his transfer, I promise you I'd forget in a month. It's all nonsense …” But she refuses to accompany her husband home, perhaps sensing the suffering that the return of Nina and Arcadina will cause Constantine. And Masha's acquiescence in her emotional trap is given ironical perspective by Medvedenko's inability to secure horses from Shamreyeff for the ride home. Having a dogged and literal mind, Medvedenko decides to walk the four miles, but his determined attempt to return to his child and the illusion of a real emotional life will obviously be no more successful than Masha's acceptance of her sterile situation with Constantine.

The only character to whom the horses represent a meaningful freedom is Nina. Even if she is not the great actress she desired to be, she has a passion for the stage and a commitment to the future lacking in Constantine. And the conversation in Act IV between Constantine and Dorn does suggest some basis for a belief in Nina's talent

CONSTANTINE:
… She always attempted big parts, but her acting was crude, without any taste, her gestures were clumsy. There were moments when she did some talented screaming, talented dying, but those were only moments.
DORN:
It means, though, she has talent?
CONSTANTINE:
I could never make out. I imagine she has

The stage will provide both an arena and an opportunity to elevate her passions to the “talented” level, while those of the other characters stultify in the restricted world of Sorin's estate. Later in the act Nina twice reinforces her refusal of Constantine with refrain-like statements: “My horses are just out there,” and “The horses are just out there.” Though she is partially indulging in a mere rationalization of her desire to leave both Constantine and the way of life that has trapped him, the rationalization is itself a sign of her very real vitality and her positive interpretation of the escape symbolized by the horses.

A partial explanation of Nina's power to utilize the horses is conveyed in Act I in Medvedenko's comment on Constantine's play: “Nobody has any grounds for separating matter from spirit, for it may be this very spirit itself is a union of material atoms.” (Act I) Besides ironically confirming his literalmindedness and suggesting that he doesn't fully understand the force of his words, Medvedenko's statement reveals that the least aware character in the play can articulate the principle that governs the others: Nina's successful manipulation of the physical means of escape is both cause and result of the intensity of her commitment to freedom; Sorin, lacking this spiritual impulse, looks only to a physical change of scene; and Constantine, despite all the talk about escape, never tries to actualize this drive by means of the horses that tease other characters into a desire for freedom.