SOURCE: Zviniatskovsky, Vladimir. “Two Ladies with Two Dogs and Two Gentlemen (Joyce Carol Oates and Chekhov).” In Chekhov Then and Now: The Reception of Chekhov in World Culture, edited by J. Douglas Clayton, pp. 125-36. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.

In the following essay, Zviniatskovsky contrasts Oates's “The Lady with the Dog” with the original version by Anton Chekhov.

Love. Either this is the remnant of something which is dying out, which was vastly important at one time, or it is a part of something which will develop in the future into something vastly important; at present though it does not satisfy and gives much less than you expect.

(From a notebook of A. P. Chekhov¹)

Surely … anyone … might acknowledge the difficulties that arise when language (or a single term, “androgyny”) is evoked to gain an emotional response … The synthesis of “masculine” and “feminine” impulses has always been the...