Smith is affiliated with Stanford University. In the following excerpt, she closely examines several aspects of "The Lady with the Pet Dog" [which she refers to as "The Lady with the Dog,"], maintaining that the story, which is intimately bound with "so many threads of Chekhov's thought and experience," is very useful in learning about Chekhov's attitude towards women and love.

It will by now be apparent that Anna Sergeevna, the lady with the dog, can be considered symbolic of the ideal love that Chekhov could envisage but not embrace—that remained, so to speak, behind a pane of glass, as in Heifitz's film. But the significance of the whole story is much greater than that comprised in Anna Sergeevna alone.

No other single work of Chekhov's fiction constitutes a more meaningful comment on Chekhov's attitude to women and to love than does 'The Lady with...