Irina Prozorov Character Analysis

OLGA: […] Every day I teach at the Gymnasium and afterwards I give lessons until evening, and so I’ve got a constant headache and my thoughts are those of an old woman. And indeed, during these four years I’ve been teaching at the Gymnasium, I’ve felt my strength and my youth draining from me every day, drop by drop. And one single thought grows stronger and stronger…

IRINA: To leave for Moscow. To sell the house, finish with everything here and—to Moscow…

OLGA: Yes! To Moscow, soon.

IRINA: Nikolay Lvovich, don’t talk to me about love.

TUZENBAKH [not listening]: I have a passionate thirst for life, for the struggle, for work, and that thirst has merged in my soul with my love for you, Irina, and as if it were all planned, you are beautiful and life seems to me so beautiful. What are you thinking about?

IRINA: You say life is beautiful. Yes, but what if it only seems so! For us three sisters life has not yet been beautiful, it has choked us like a weed… My tears are streaming.

IRINA: I must find another job, this one doesn’t suit me. What I wanted, what I dreamed of, it definitely does not have. It’s work with no poetry, no thinking […] [Andrey] lost two weeks ago, he lost at the beginning of December. I wish he’d be quick and lose everything, perhaps we’d leave this town. Lord God in heaven, I dream of Moscow every night. I’m just like a madwoman. [Laughs] We’re moving there in June, and until June there’s still… February, March, April, May… almost half a year!

OLGA: Darling, I tell you as a sister, as a friend, if you want my advice, marry the Baron!

[IRINA is crying quietly.]

I know you respect him and think highly of him… True, he’s not good-looking, but he’s so decent and honest… After all, we marry not for love but just to do our duty. At any rate that’s what I think, and I would marry without being in love. I would accept whoever proposed, provided only he was a decent man. I would even marry someone old…

IRINA: I’ve been waiting. We were going to move to Moscow and there I would meet my true love, I dreamed of him, I loved him… But all that’s turned out to be nonsense, all nonsense…

IRINA: […] Nikolay, why are you so distracted today?

[A pause.]

What happened yesterday by the theatre?

TUZENBAKH [making an impatient movement]: I’ll be back in an hour and be with you again. [Kissing her hands.] My beloved… [Looking into her face.] It’s already five years since I came to love you and I still can’t get accustomed to it, and you seem to me more and more beautiful. […] Tomorrow I will take you away, we will work, we’ll be rich, my dreams will come true. You will be happy. There’s just one thing, only one—you don’t love me!

IRINA: It’s not in my power! I will be your wife, true and obedient, but love—no, what can I do! [Weeps.] I’ve never loved once in my life. Oh, how I dreamed of love, for a long time how I dreamed, day and night, but my soul was like an expensive piano, shut and its key lost.

ANFISA: […] Life is good, my little girl, life is good! In a school apartment in the Gymnasium with Olyushka, my darling—God has granted me this in my old age. I haven’t lived like this in all my born days, sinner that I am… A big apartment, nothing to pay, and I have a little room all to myself and a bed. All free. I wake up at night - and O Lord, Mother of God, there is no human being happier than me!

OLGA [embracing both her sisters]: The band is playing so gaily and cheerfully, it makes one want to live! My God! Time will pass and we will be gone for ever, they’ll forget us, forget our faces, our voices and how many there were of us, but for those who live after us our sufferings will become joy —happiness and peace will come down on earth, and there’ll be a kind word and a blessing for those who are living now. Dear sisters, our life is not yet over. We shall live! The band is playing so gaily, so joyfully, and I think in a little while we too will know why we live, why we suffer… If we only knew, if we only knew!

CHEBUTYKIN: […] What can it matter! What can it matter!

OLGA: If we only knew, if we only knew!

OLGA: […] Every day I teach at the Gymnasium and afterwards I give lessons until evening, and so I’ve got a constant headache and my thoughts are those of an old woman. And indeed, during these four years I’ve been teaching at the Gymnasium, I’ve felt my strength and my youth draining from me every day, drop by drop. And one single thought grows stronger and stronger…

IRINA: To leave for Moscow. To sell the house, finish with everything here and—to Moscow…

OLGA: Yes! To Moscow, soon.

IRINA: Nikolay Lvovich, don’t talk to me about love.

TUZENBAKH [not listening]: I have a passionate thirst for life, for the struggle, for work, and that thirst has merged in my soul with my love for you, Irina, and as if it were all planned, you are beautiful and life seems to me so beautiful. What are you thinking about?

IRINA: You say life is beautiful. Yes, but what if it only seems so! For us three sisters life has not yet been beautiful, it has choked us like a weed… My tears are streaming.

IRINA: I must find another job, this one doesn’t suit me. What I wanted, what I dreamed of, it definitely does not have. It’s work with no poetry, no thinking […] [Andrey] lost two weeks ago, he lost at the beginning of December. I wish he’d be quick and lose everything, perhaps we’d leave this town. Lord God in heaven, I dream of Moscow every night. I’m just like a madwoman. [Laughs] We’re moving there in June, and until June there’s still… February, March, April, May… almost half a year!

OLGA: Darling, I tell you as a sister, as a friend, if you want my advice, marry the Baron!

[IRINA is crying quietly.]

I know you respect him and think highly of him… True, he’s not good-looking, but he’s so decent and honest… After all, we marry not for love but just to do our duty. At any rate that’s what I think, and I would marry without being in love. I would accept whoever proposed, provided only he was a decent man. I would even marry someone old…

IRINA: I’ve been waiting. We were going to move to Moscow and there I would meet my true love, I dreamed of him, I loved him… But all that’s turned out to be nonsense, all nonsense…

IRINA: […] Nikolay, why are you so distracted today?

[A pause.]

What happened yesterday by the theatre?

TUZENBAKH [making an impatient movement]: I’ll be back in an hour and be with you again. [Kissing her hands.] My beloved… [Looking into her face.] It’s already five years since I came to love you and I still can’t get accustomed to it, and you seem to me more and more beautiful. […] Tomorrow I will take you away, we will work, we’ll be rich, my dreams will come true. You will be happy. There’s just one thing, only one—you don’t love me!

IRINA: It’s not in my power! I will be your wife, true and obedient, but love—no, what can I do! [Weeps.] I’ve never loved once in my life. Oh, how I dreamed of love, for a long time how I dreamed, day and night, but my soul was like an expensive piano, shut and its key lost.

ANFISA: […] Life is good, my little girl, life is good! In a school apartment in the Gymnasium with Olyushka, my darling—God has granted me this in my old age. I haven’t lived like this in all my born days, sinner that I am… A big apartment, nothing to pay, and I have a little room all to myself and a bed. All free. I wake up at night - and O Lord, Mother of God, there is no human being happier than me!

OLGA [embracing both her sisters]: The band is playing so gaily and cheerfully, it makes one want to live! My God! Time will pass and we will be gone for ever, they’ll forget us, forget our faces, our voices and how many there were of us, but for those who live after us our sufferings will become joy —happiness and peace will come down on earth, and there’ll be a kind word and a blessing for those who are living now. Dear sisters, our life is not yet over. We shall live! The band is playing so gaily, so joyfully, and I think in a little while we too will know why we live, why we suffer… If we only knew, if we only knew!

CHEBUTYKIN: […] What can it matter! What can it matter!

OLGA: If we only knew, if we only knew!