The Lady With the Dog: Part III Summary & Analysis

Gurov returns to his Moscow routine—going through life with his wife and his daughter, dining out, and entertaining in his bourgeois social circle. It already feels like winter in Moscow. This is a society that he was born to and initially takes some pleasure in returning to. However, all his previous hobbies quickly seem to lose their former charms and he finds them false.

Deep winter arrives, and Gurov still can’t shake thoughts of Anna from his mind. He begins romanticizing their time together in Yalta and to feel Anna’s presence everywhere he goes. He can nearly hear her breathing or the rustle of her skirt. In his memories Anna is even younger and more beautiful, and he, too, is a better version of himself. His torment is all the worse because he cannot tell anyone else about her.

Gurov has to settle for talking vaguely of love, but even this raises his wife’s suspicions, and she tells him that he doesn’t suit the part of a fop. He obliquely shares the importance the affair has taken on in his mind with an official, but when the man proves to care way more about fish than the story, Gurov grows angry with all of Moscow society. He thinks the world around him is fully of shallow, pretentious people living “wingless” lives.

Gurov comes up with a pretext to go to St. Petersburg to try and see Anna. He takes a hotel room and easily finds out the street where Anna and her husband live. He also learns that they live well and that her husband is known and respected in town.

Gurov goes to the street where Anna lives and stands by an imposing-looking gray fence just opposite it. He considers what would happen if he went up to the house itself, weighing the possibility that her husband might answer the door and that his showing up on her doorstop might ruin everything. To do so would be “tactless.”

Gurov decides not to approach the house, and instead watches its comings and goings without seeing Anna. At one point, he hears a piano playing inside and thinks it must be Anna at the keys. Eventually Gurov retreats back to his hotel room and, frustrated, falls asleep.

The next morning, Gurov spots a poster for the opera “The Geisha” and decides to attend the premiere on the chance that Anna may also be there. When he goes, the opera is packed, and Gurov judges how provincial and silly both the theater and the crowd is.

Gurov spots Anna amidst the crowd. Despite the fact that she seems outwardly unremarkable in the “provincial” theater, he realizes that she is the light of his life. He cannot help but thinking and dreaming about the two of them being together.

Gurov spots Anna’s husband as well. He is a slightly balding man with side-whiskers who is continually stooping, as if he’s bowing to some superior. Gurov decides that he really does look like a lackey.

During the opera’s intermission, Gurov approaches Anna in her seat. He scares her badly with his reappearance, which in turn frightens him. The orchestra starts tuning up and confrontation suddenly seems to Gurov like a terrible mistake.

Anna leads Gurov away from the seats into a staircase off of the main auditorium and, in something of a panic, demands to know why Gurov has come. Despite Gurov’s attempts to explain himself, Anna plows ahead, revealing how both unhappy and still in love with him she is.

Anna asks what he’s doing and Gurov responds by pulling her to him and kissing her, even as a pair of schoolboys pass them on the stairway and more people appear to coming up behind them. Anna pushes him away.

Anna reiterates her love for Gurov and promises to go to Moscow to see him if he leaves the theater, and then she heads down the stairs. Gurov stands there for a moment, and then does as she asks and leaves.