NOVEL "A Marriage Proposal" By Anton Chekhov's

Anton Chekhov's full-length masterpieces may be considered comedies, yet they are filled with dour moments, failed loves, and sometimes even death. This is especially true in his play The Seagull -- a comedic drama which ends with a suicide. Although other plays such as Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard do not culminate in such an explosive resolution, a feeling of hopelessness permeates each of Chekhov's plays. This is a sharp contrast to some of his more jovial one act comedies. "The Marriage Proposal," for example, is a delightful farce that could have ended very darkly, but the playwright instead maintains its energetic whimsy, concluding in a successful albeit combative engagement.Cha

caracters:
The main character, Ivan Vassilevitch Lomov, is a heavy-set man in his mid-thirties, prone to anxiety, stubbornness, and hypochondria. These flaws are further amplified because he becomes a nervous wreck when he tries to propose marriage.

Stepan Stephanovitch Chubukov owns land next to Ivan. A man in his early seventies, he gladly grants permission to Ivan, but soon calls off the

engagement once an argument over property ensues. His chief concerns are maintaining his wealth and keeping his daughter happy.

Natalya Stepanovna is the female lead in this three person play. She can be jovial and welcoming, yet stubborn, proud and possessive, just like her male counterparts.

Plot Summary of "A Marriage Proposal":
The play is set in rural countryside of Russia during the late 1800s. When Ivan arrives at the home of the Chubukov family, the elderly Stepan assumes that the well-dressed young man has come to borrow money. Instead, Stepan is pleased when Ivan asks for his daughter's hand in marriage. Stepan whole-heartedly bestows his blessing, declaring that he already loves him like a son. The old man then leaves to fetch his daughter, assuring the younger man that Natalya will graciously accept the proposal.

Plot synopsis

Ivan Vassiliyitch Lomov, a long-time neighbor of Stepan Stepanovitch Chubukov, has come to propose marriage to Chubukov's 25-year-old daughter, Natalya. After he has asked and received joyful permission to marry Natalya, she is invited into the room, and he tries to convey to her the proposal. Lomov is a hypochondriac, and, while trying to make clear his reasons for being there, he gets into an argument with Natalia about The Oxen Meadows, a disputed piece of land between their respective properties, which results in him having "palpitations" and numbness in his leg. After her father notices they are arguing, he joins in, and then sends Ivan out of the house. While Stepan rants about Lomov, he expresses his shock that "this fool dares to make you (Natalya) a proposal of marriage!" She immediately starts into hysterics, begging for her father to bring him back. He does, and Natalia and Ivan get into a second big argument, this time about the superiority of their respective hunting dogs, Otkatai and Ugadi. Ivan collapses from his exhaustion over arguing, and father and daughter fear he's dead. However, after a few minutes he regains consciousness, and Tschubukov all but forces him and his daughter to accept the proposal with a kiss. Immediately following the kiss, the couple gets into another argument.

Themes

The farce explores the process of getting married and could be read as a satire on the upper middle class and courtship.

The play points out the struggle to balance the economic necessities of marriage with what the characters themselves actually want. It shows the characters' desperation for marriage as comical.

In Chekhov's Russia, marriage was a means of economic stability for most people. They married to gain wealth and possessions or to satisfy social pressure. The satire is conveyed successfully by emphasizing the couple's foolish arguments over small things. The main arguments in the play revolve around The Oxen Meadows and two dogs called Flyer and Finder.

Performance history

The Proposal was successful in its first runs in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and quickly became popular in small towns across Russia.^[1] Tsar Alexander III liked the play when he had it performed for him.^[2] Chekhov himself thought farces were not really worth much as literature; before its success, he called The Proposal a "wretched, boring, vulgar little skit."^[3] He advised its director, Leontiev, to "roll cigarettes out of it for all I care."^[3]

When Vassar College staged The Proposal in the 1920s, they performed it three times in one evening, each with a very different staging: "as realism, expressionism, and constructivism."^[2] In the second version, played closer to tragedy, the actors were masked, and in the third the actors were all dressed in work suits in a playground, tossing a ball between them.^[2]

In 1935 in the Soviet Union, the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Vsevolod Meyerhold combined The Proposal with Chekhov's other short plays The Bear and The Anniversary to form a three-act play called 33 Swoons that demonstrated the weakness of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia.^[4]