To protect themselves against this encroachment, the sisters have erected a paling of culture, and within it, they have invited the military. For once, Chekhov does not use outsiders as a disruptive force; for the sisters, the soldiers spell color, excitement, life. But the factitiousness of this glamour quickly becomes apparent: a peacetime army is a symbol of idleness and pointless expense. Men trained to fight while away their time philosophizing and playing the piano, teaching gymnastics and reading the paper, carrying on backstairs love affairs and fighting duels. The sisters have pinned their hopes on a regiment of straw men. It is hard to determine who is the weakest: Vershinin, forecasting future happiness while unable to cope with his psychotic wife; Tusenbach, whose noble sentiments are belied by his unprepossessing looks and unassertive manner; or Solyony, veering crazily between blustering egotism and crippling introspection. These are carpet knights, suitable for dressing out a party but not for salvaging anyone’s life. That the sisters should make such a fuss about them reveals at once the irreality of their values.
If culture, in the sense of refined feelings revealed through sensitivity and a cultivated understanding of art, is the touchstone for the Prozorovs, it will not sustain scrutiny either. The Prozorov family prides itself on the Russian intellectual’s virtues of political awareness, social commitment, and artistic discrimination, and judges others by them. Many of the major characters are connected with the educational system. When tested by the realities of life, however, the fabric of their culture soon falls to pieces. They and their circle cling to the shreds and patches—Latin tags for Kulygin, quotations from Russian classics for Masha and Solyony, amateur music-making. Andrey’s “sawing away” at the violin and Masha’s untested prowess at the keyboard are mocked in the last act by Natasha’s offstage rendition of the “Maiden’s Prayer.” Irina grieves that she cannot remember the Italian for window, as if a foreign vocabulary could buoy her up in a sea of despair. Solyony poses as the romantic poet Lermontov, but his behavior shows him to be more like Martynov, the bully who killed Lermontov in a duel. During the fire, it is Natasha who must remind Olga of the cultured person’s duty “to help the poor, it’s an obligation of the rich.” Philosophizing (always a pejorative word for Chekhov) passes for thought, newspaper filler passes for knowledge, a superior attitude passes for delicacy of feeling, yet everyone’s conduct sooner or later dissolves into rudeness or immorality.
Three Sisters does not simply demonstrate how three gifted women were defeated by a philistine environment, but rather how their unhappiness is of their own making. If they are subjugated and evicted by the Natashas of this world, it is because they have not recognized and dealt with their own shortcomings. At one point or another, each of the sisters is as callous and purblind as Natasha herself. Olga cattily criticizes Natasha’s dress sense at a party, although she has been told that the girl is shy in company; in Act Three she refuses to listen to Masha’s avowal of love, will not face facts. Her very removal to a garret is as much avoidance of involvement as it is an exile imposed by Natasha. Irina is remarkably unpleasant to both her suitors, Tusenbach and Solyony; as a telegraph clerk she is brusque with a grieving mother, and at the very last refuses to say the few words of love that might lighten the Baron’s final moments, even though, as Chekhov informed Olga Knipper, she is prescient of the impending catastrophe. Masha swears like a trooper, drinks, abuses the old nanny nearly as badly and with less excuse than Natasha does. Her flagrant adultery with Vershinin may ultimately be more destructive than Natasha’s with Protopopov, for Kulygin genuinely loves his wife, whereas Andrey tries to forget he has one.
This litany of faults is not meant to blacken the sisters or to exonerate Natasha, Solyony, and the others. It is meant to redress the balance: Chekhov selects the Prozorov family (who, along with the officers, were based on acquaintances) to sum up a way of life. With all the benefits of education, a loving home, and creature comforts, the sisters stagnate, not simply because they live in the sticks but because they keep deferring any activity that might give meaning to their existence. The ennobling labor that Tusenbach and Vershinin rhapsodize over, that inspires Irina, seems to have nothing in common with doing a job every day. Olga’s teaching, Irina’s work at the Council and the telegraph office, the position at the mines to which Tusenbach retires offer a prospect of meaningless drudgery.
The prevalent state of mind is to be “sick and tired” (nadoelo). In his brief moment alone with Masha in Act Two, Vershinin blames the average local educated Russian for being “sick and tired of his wife, sick and tired of his estate, sick and tired of his horses”; but he is clearly characterizing himself, for he soon draws a picture of his own wretched marriage. Masha, whom Ver-shinin would exempt as an exceptional person, is “sick and tired of winter,” and when her husband proclaims his love with “I’m content, I’m content, I’m content!” she bitterly spits back, “I’m sick and tired, sick and tired, sick and tired.” Even the genteel Olga pronounces herself “sick and tired” of the fire. The unanimous response to this spiritual malaise is a commonplace fatalism. Chebutykin’s dismissive “It doesn’t matter” (Vsyo ravno) is echoed by most of the characters. Vershinin quotes it when denying differences between the military and civilians; Tusenbach describes his resignation from the army in those words; Solyony denigrates his love for Irina with the phrase. According to Irina, Andrey’s debts “don’t matter” to Natasha. This deliberate insouciance is the counterbalance to the equally deliberate velleities about the future.
To represent the slow disintegration of these lives, Three Sisters unfolds over a longer period of time than any of Chekhov’s other plays. It begins on the fifth of May, Irina’s twentieth nameday, and ends in autumn, four years later. The characters talk incessantly about time, from the very first line. The passage of time is denoted by such obvious tokens as Natasha’s growing children, Andrey’s problem with overweight and debts, Olga’s promotions. However, this is more than a family chronicle. Chekhov insists on the subjectivity of time. Each act indicates that what had gone before is now irrevocably swallowed up, not lost simply in the distant past, but in what had been yesterday. The youth in Moscow, aglow with promise, to which the sisters retrospect is tarnished by their initial response to its witness, Vershinin: “Oh, how you’ve aged!” The party in Act One is spoken of in Act Two, a few months later, as if it belonged to a bygone Golden Age. By Act Three, Tusenbach is referring to it as “Back in those days.” Time measures the increasing negativity of life; it has been two years since the doctor took a drink, three years since Masha played the piano, or maybe four. It’s been a long time since Andrey played cards—that is, the few months since Act Two. If time passes in a steady process of diminution, perspectives into the future are not enough to replace the losses. Chebutykin smashes a valuable clock, demolishing time, but his chiming watch in the last act continues to announce fresh departures.
Setting up markers for time, Chekhov constructs each act around a special event that catalyzes routine responses and sticks in the memory. Irina’s name-day celebration serves a number of dramatic functions: it commemorates a date, assembles all the characters in one place, and is the highwater mark for the sisters’ hopes. It is the last time we see them as sole mistresses in their own domain: each of them is on the verge of a promising situation. Coming of age opens the world to Irina; the arrival of Vershinin enlivens Masha; and Olga still enjoys teaching. The Shrovetide party in Act Two is in sharp contrast: it takes place after dark, with several habitués absent (Olga and Kulygin must work late, Vershinin is delayed by his wife’s suicide attempt). Twice the party is broken up by the usurper Natasha, from whom no masqueraders are forthcoming any more than carriage horses were from Shamraev in The Seagull. Finally, the revelers realize that amusement must now be sought outside this home.