A Month in the Country (Criticism)

Criticism

D. L. Kellett

Kellett has an M.A. in literature and works in corporate communications. In this essay she discusses Turgenev’s use of dichotomies as a structural and character development device.

In the introduction that precedes Richard Newnham’s English translation of A Month in the Country, Richard Schechner applauded Turgenev for what he called “a masterful study of Natalya Petrovna,” the play’s main character. While Schechner discussed at some length the ways in which Natalya’s fear of men is closely linked to her fear of her father, his analysis also culminated in an important conclusion: “Natalya Petrovna is a failure in love, and that is the crux of her personality and the play. She cannot consummate love with her husband or Rakitin; Beliayev slips out of her grasp. She dissolves in a series of futile gestures and contradictions as the play draws to a close.”

It is certainly true that Natalya fails to achieve a fulfilling romantic relationship with any of her three leading men — Islayev, Rakitin, or Beliayev. Her attitude toward her husband seems at its best a benevolent tolerance, while her toying with Rakitin can be viewed as an ego-feeding, yet yawn-inspiring dalliance for her. As Schechner aptly noted, there is only a chance for her with Beliayev, for “he is young, athletic, virile,” and because she perceives him to be naive, he is initially approachable. Ultimately, however, his departure from the estate also makes him inaccessible to her. Natalya is indeed a failure in love. Ironically, her eagerness to obtain the freedom and passion she desires is somehow too closely linked to her inability to attain the love that she believes will provide these things for her. She assigns value and ultimate happiness to the very things that she can not have, or does not attain, and thus, she dissolves into the “futile gestures and contradictions” of which Schechner spoke.

Schechner argued that it is Natalya’s very fear of men that makes having any man impossible for her. She can only love that which is not a threat to her, yet all of her lovers either become threatening or boring, and as a result, love and the subsequent freedom and passion she seeks from it are unattainable for her. Her ultimate contradiction is perhaps a trite one — she wants what she can not have and does not want what is readily hers for the taking. As the play wraps up, all of Natalya’s desires and realizations come to naught. Beliayev and Rakitin leave the estate, and she is left with her husband, who mistakenly believes that all happiness has been restored.

One way to understand the play’s ending is offered by Schechner when he concluded that it is the “denouement of her [Natalya’s] ineffectuality.” Indeed, her ineffectuality is central to her character development. As she grapples with her own contradictions, she dissolves into a perpetual state of frustration with her unfulfilled wishes. The elements of contradiction and opposition manifest themselves very clearly in Natalya’s inner conflicts — should she or should she not pursue Beliayev, does she like or dislike Rakitin, can she be free or will she always feel like a prisoner? Embedded in her questions are dichotomies like faithful/unfaithful, love/hate, freedom/entrapment, and honesty/ dishonesty.

In addition to being defining characteristics of Natalya’s character, such dichotomies are central elements in the work’s overall structure. In fact, Turgenev’s use of these elements permeates the play on almost every level. A quick glance at act one demonstrates the ways in which Turgenev incorporates these elements in his work from the very start.

When the curtains first rise, Schaaf, Liza, and Anna are playing hearts, a card game that is based not only on winning or losing but on a strategy that requires players to think in terms of all or nothing. 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 dominate A 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.

What Do I Read Next?

• In his time, Nikolai Gogol was known for his unabashed criticism of Russia’s bureaucracy. Today he is known as the Father of Russian realism. His short story “The Overcoat” was published in 1840 and reflects the author’s skilled use of realism.
• Hedda Gabler is another play with a domineering aristocratic female heroine who is looking for happiness from within the confines of a dissatisfying marriage. This play was written by Norwegian Henrik Ibsen and was first published in 1890.
• Also a contemplation on what makes a life well lived, Leo Tolstoy’s short story “The Death of Ivan Ilych” was first published in 1886. Tolstoy has long been considered one of Russia’s finest prose writers and is best known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
• The French author Gustave Flaubert was a contemporary of Turgenev’s. In his novel, Madame Bovary, which was published in 1856, Flaubert explores the theme of disillusionment through a female protagonist who has an adulterous affair.
• The themes of love, youth, and happiness are all to be found in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, which was written in 1903 and first performed at the Moscow Art Theater in 1904.
• Fathers and Sons is considered by some to be one of Turgenev’s pinnacle works. Published in 1862, this novel favorably explores the rejection of all forms of tradition and authority through its male protagonist, Bazarov.