Creasman is an Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia Wesleyan College. In the following excerpt, he claims that understanding Gurov's intense display of emotion in "The Lady with the Pet Dog" [which he refers to as "The Lady with the Dog"], is not only crucial for understanding his motivations, but is helpful for the reader to gain a better understanding of the structure of Chekhov's short fiction in general.

In 1921, Conrad Aiken [in Collected Criticism, 1968] made the following assessment of Anton Chekhov's work: "This, after all, is Chekhov's genius—he was a master of mood." Indeed Aiken's statement is a good starting point for a discussion of the structure of Chekhov's short fiction. Many of Chekhov's short stories—the later ones in particular—are structured around the main character's moments of strong emotion, a feature of the author's short fiction that has never...