The central character is Ivan Voynitsky, or Uncle Vanya, who gradually comes to an awareness of the folly of his life’s ideals. Dedicated for many years to advancing the career of Professor Serebryakov, the husband of his dead sister, Uncle Vanya comes to realize that the professor is a fraud; that the years devoted to making the family estate produce extra income for his brother-in-law’s expenses in the city not only required the sacrifice of his own ambitions, but also stifled the hopes of Sonya, the professor’s daughter.

Uncle Vanya tries to find a release for the pain of lost illusion by seducing the old professor’s bored, young, beautiful, and equally disillusioned second wife, Yelena. She rejects his advances but is charmed by the attentions of Doctor Astrov, a friend of the family secretly loved by Sonya, who is too shy and resigned to express her love openly. Astrov, like the professor, is also somewhat of a crank; however, his enthusiasm for the cultivation of trees is a life-affirming ideal in contrast to the dead ideas of the old professor.

All this hopelessness and human waste is finally challenged by the crazed and absurd revolt of Uncle Vanya. When the professor decides that the estate should be sold and the money invested to raise more income for his city life, Uncle Vanya reacts in maddened horror and insists that the estate belonged originally to Sonya’s mother and must pass on to Sonya. Yelena tries to get her husband to apologize to Uncle Vanya, but the professor’s attempt to make amends is met by comic violence. Uncle Vanya shoots at him twice, missing both times.

It would be an error to interpret this “shooting scene” as a climax. Chekhov’s plays lack conventional dramatic structure; there is no developed action or plot, and one cannot make too much of any conflict between the characters. What matters in Chekhov is the deeply insightful revelation of what makes his ordinary people feel, dream, and live the way they do. The fluid action provides greater opportunity for the characters to reveal their innermost thoughts and impressions. Chekhov seems to be telling us that any life transcends the time, space, and action that determine its direction.

Bibliography:

Bentley, Eric. “Craftsmanship in Uncle Vanya.” In Anton Chekhov’s Plays, translated and edited by Eugene K. Bristow. New York: Norton, 1977. Bentley shows that Chekhov’s naturalism in Uncle Vanya is grounded in his mature psychological vision that life has no real endings.

Bordinat, Philip. “Dramatic Structure in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.” In Chekhov’s Great Plays: A Critical Anthology, edited with an introduction by Jean-Pierre Barricelli. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Bordinat argues that Uncle Vanya follows classical dramatic construction if the protagonist is seen as “the individual” embodied in the four major characters. The conflict then becomes the individual’s desire for happiness in the face of the provincial Russian “wasteland.”

Melchinger, Siegfried. “The Wood Demon and Uncle Vanya.” In Anton Chekhov, translated by Edith Tarcov. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972. Melchinger analyzes how Chekhov reworked his unsuccessful 1889 play, The Wood Demon (Leshy) into the groundbreaking 1897 Uncle Vanya. He focuses particularly on the parallel situations of Astrov and Vanya in the later play.

Peace, Richard. “Uncle Vanya.” In Chekhov: A Study of the Four Major Plays. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. Peace focuses on the symbolism of Uncle Vanya and discusses the significance in the play of tea drinking, the forest, the storm, birds and animals, and work.

Yermilov, V. “Uncle Vanya: The Play’s Movement.” In Chekhov: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Robert Louis Jackson. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. Discusses the use of musical and weather imagery in the play. Yermilov points out the cyclical movement of the play: The external situation at the end replicates the situation at the beginning, but internally everyone has changed.