The Theme of Social Change in Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard"

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The central theme of The Cherry Orchard is that of social change. Written in the early 1900s, the play depicts a Russia on the brink of revolution.

As the aristocracy’s power wanes, former serfs experience freedom, and a burgeoning middle class takes root, the central characters of the play—representative of the upper, middle, and lower classes—find themselves struggling to negotiate their relationships, loyalties, and anxieties about the changing socioeconomic landscape of their country.

Through The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov dramatizes the concerns of several social strata, showing how the emergence of a middle class in Russia disrupted and negatively impacted the lives not only of the aristocrats their “new money” threatened, but also those of the servants and workers unable to thrive in the new order of things.

Chekhov ultimately argues that rapid social change—though necessary for societal growth—can actually end up leaving behind the very individuals it seeks to uplift.

From its very first pages, The Cherry Orchard establishes itself—as an expansive symbol of the disappearing social order and the emergence of a new one centered around an ambitious, power-hungry middle class.

Chekhov could easily have made The Cherry Orchard about the pitiful, obsolete concerns of the wealthy, landowning class in the face of the triumph of the common people; instead, he takes a more nuanced view and incorporates the very real way in which even positive social change renders certain ways of life irrelevant and leaves even privileged families and individuals out in the cold, unprepared for the new world stretching out before them.

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TOPICS: Books/Literature; Reference
KEYWORDS: antonchekhov; chekhov; cherryorchard; russianliterature

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All Russia is our orchard. The land is vast and beautiful, there are many marvellous places in it.

Think, Anya, your grandfather, great grandfather and all your ancestors were serf masters, they owned living souls, and do not human beings look out at you from every cherry in the orchard, from every leaf, from every branch, do you not hear their voices?

To own living souls, it has corrupted you all, those living in the past and now, so that your mother, you yourself, your uncle do not recognise that you are living in debt, at somebody else’s expense, at the expense of those people who you would not even allow over your doorstep...

We have fallen behind at least two hundred years, we have nothing, no intelligible relationship with our past, we only philosophize, complain about boredom or drink vodka.

It’s so obvious that to begin to live in the present we must first redeem the past, and we can redeem it only by suffering, only by exceptional and unremitting labour. Remember that, Anya.

- Anton Chekhov, 1904

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“In Russia itself, Chekhov’s drama fell out of fashion after the revolution, but it was later incorporated into the Soviet canon. The character of Lopakhin, for example, was reinvented as a hero of the new order, rising from a modest background to eventually possess the gentry’s estates...”

“One of the first non-Russians to praise Chekhov’s plays was George Bernard Shaw, who subtitled his Heartbreak House “A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes,” and pointed out similarities between the predicament of the British landed class and that of their Russian counterparts as depicted by Chekhov: “the same nice people, the same utter futility.”

https://bookstorecafe.gr/en/anton-chekhov/

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[KitJ]

Good post. Thank you.

Russian writers are tough to read. One hundred word sentences and such.

Chekhov, Gorky/Peshkov, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak, Gogol. Truly great literature of the human struggle.

Sam Clemens is much easier. :)

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You’re welcome!

Yes and that’s why plays (like above) and short stories are a great place to start! (Re: Russian Literature.)

[alexander_busek]

Sam Clemens is much easier. :)

Why dost thou chaff us so?

“It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and laburnums, lit with the glory‑fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind nature for the wingless wild things that have their home in the tree‑tops and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of woodland, the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere, far in the empty sky a solitary oesophagus slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and the peace of God.”

Regards,