2 July 2015

chekhovg

This statue of Chekhov is in Moscow on Kamergersky Pereulok, a pedestrian street near the Bolshoi. Chekhov wrote stunningly well about women. And most unusually. In a short story called ‘A Woman’s Kingdom‘ he describes a woman who has inherited a factory and responsibilities but wishes she hadn’t: ‘She thought with vexation that other girls of her age — she was in her twenty-sixth year — were now busy looking after their households, were weary and would sleep sound, and would wake up tomorrow morning in holiday mood; many of them had long been married and had children… she longed to wash, to iron, to run to the shop and the tavern as she used to do every day when she lived with her mother. She ought to have been a work-girl and not the factory owner!’