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Change, Suffering, and the Meaning of Life
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Three Sisters, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Three Sisters spans several years in the Prozorov siblings’ lives, during which each of them pines for a future that seems unattainable. For the sisters, that future looks like a return to their beloved hometown of Moscow; for their brother, Andrey, it’s an escape from the mediocre work and marriage into which he’s drifted. By showing his characters entangling themselves in reminiscence and pining, Chekov argues that as long as people are fixated on what they do not have, happiness will be constantly beyond their reach.
For the three sisters, Moscow represents the unattainable things that they want out of life. In Act One, Olga reminisces about leaving Moscow 11 years ago: “I remember very well, at the beginning of May just now in Moscow everything is already in bloom, it’s warm, everything’s bathed in sunshine. […] This morning I woke up, I saw a mass of light, I saw the spring, and joy welled up in my soul and I had a huge longing for home.” More than a decade later, Moscow is still “home” to Olga, and beauty in her provincial residence leads not to contentment where she is, but a melancholy desire for someplace else. A year later, the sisters’ plans to move back to Moscow have not yet come to fruition. Irina despises her unpoetic work in the Telegraph Office: “What I wanted, what I dreamed of, it definitely does not have.” In response to her discontentment at work, Irina obsesses over Moscow: “I dream of Moscow every night. I’m just like a madwoman […] We’re moving there in June.” Presumably, Irina could find work that does offer “what [she] dreamed of.” Instead, she believes that moving to Moscow is the only way to fulfill all her suppressed desires.
Later, when Masha claims that if she were in Moscow, she wouldn’t mind the poor weather, Vershinin argues that happiness doesn’t really exist—only the desire for it is real. He tells a story about an imprisoned French minister who pined for natural beauty: “Of course, now he’s been released, he doesn’t notice the birds, just as before. In the same way you too won’t notice Moscow when you’re living there. We have no happiness and it doesn’t exist, we only desire it.” In other words, living in Moscow wouldn’t really fulfill the sisters’ longings—when they obtained the object of their desire, they’d just transfer their longings elsewhere; it’s human nature. Eventually, Olga talks Irina into marrying Baron Tuzenbakh because he’s “so decent and honest,” even though Irina does not love him. Irina admits that “I’ve been waiting [to marry]. 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.” Even after Irina concedes to marry Tuzenbakh, she cries to her sister, “only let us go to Moscow! I beg you, let us go! There’s nothing better than Moscow in the whole world!” By this time, Irina knows that the mythical move to Moscow isn’t happening; Moscow has become a symbol of contentment in her mind, not primarily a real place. Having agreed to a pragmatic marriage, and assuming that happiness is therefore lost, she expresses her idealistic yearning one final time. For each of the sisters, then, the dream of Moscow isn’t so much about the city itself; it’s a stand-in for their own compromises and disappointments.
The sisters’ brother, Andrey, showed great academic promise in his youth, but his adulthood is a series of disappointments, and he obsesses over his past achievements and an ill-defined future. Andrey tells his servant, “Dear old Ferapont, how strangely life changes, how it deceives us! Today out of boredom and having nothing to do I picked up this book—my old university lectures […] To be a member of the local District Council, when every night I dream that I am a professor at Moscow University, a famous scholar who is Russia’s pride!” Bored and at loose ends in his actual occupation, Andrey is obsessed with his past. Andrey later confronts his sisters, telling them he knows they don’t respect the ways in which he’s settled—they don’t like his wife, Natasha, and think his work on the District Council is beneath him. He claims that he considers his job “just as hallowed and elevated as an academic one,” and he repeatedly describes his overbearing wife as “an exceptional, honest human being.” But his rant is quickly followed by agitation and weeping, and he tells the women, “My darling sisters […] don’t believe me, don’t believe me…” No matter how Andrey tries to portray his circumstances, his unhappiness isn’t far beneath the surface.
Yet Andrey, too, clings to the hope of some vague future: “The present is repulsive, but when I think of the future how wonderful things become! There’s a feeling of ease, of space; and in the distance there’s a glimmer of the dawn, I see freedom, I see myself and my children freed from idleness […], from goose with cabbage, from a nap after dinner, from the ignoble life.” Like his sisters, Andrey longs for a more engaging life than that of provincial leisure and conventionality; but it’s just a “glimmer,” with no more substance than the sisters’ dreams of Moscow.
Strikingly, by the end of the play, the only character who seems to find real happiness is the elderly servant Anfisa. When Olga houses Anfisa in her school apartment and provides for her needs, Anfisa marvels, “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!” Anfisa’s happy ending supports Chekov’s argument that gratitude is the key to contentment—and it also suggests that Chekov saw the provincial noble class, like the Prozorov siblings, as less capable of such.
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Happiness, Longing, and Disappointment ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Happiness, Longing, and Disappointment appears in each act of The Three Sisters. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Happiness, Longing, and Disappointment Quotes in The Three Sisters
Below you will find the important quotes in The Three Sisters related to the theme of Happiness, Longing, and Disappointment.
Act One
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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.
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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.
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Act Two
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ANDREY: […] Dear old Ferapont, how strangely life changes, how it deceives us! Today out of boredom and having nothing to do I picked up this book—my old university lectures, and I began to laugh… My God, I’m the secretary of the District Council—and Protopopov’s the chairman—and the most I can hope for is to be a member of that Council! To be a member of the local District Council, when every night I dream that I am a professor at Moscow University, a famous scholar who is Russia’s pride!
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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!
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VERSHININ: The other day I was reading the diary of a French minister, written in prison. The minister had been sent there over the Panama affair. With what delight, with what rapture he talks about the birds he sees from his prison window and which he never noticed before when he was a minister. Of course, now he’s been released, he doesn’t notice the birds, just as before. In the same way you too won’t notice Moscow when you’re living there. We have no happiness and it doesn’t exist, we only desire it.
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Act Three
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CHEBUTYKIN: Last Wednesday I had a patient at Zasyp, a woman—she died and it’s my fault that she died. Yes… Twenty-five years ago I knew a few things but now I remember nothing. Nothing. Perhaps I am not a man but only look as if I have arms and legs and a head; perhaps I don’t exist at all but only think that I walk, eat, sleep. [Weeps.] Oh if only I could just not exist! [Stops weeping; gloomily] Devil knows… A couple of days ago they were chatting in the Club; talking about Shakespeare, Voltaire… I haven’t read them, haven’t read them at all, but I tried to look as if I had. And the others did what I did. How cheap! How low! And I remembered the woman I murdered on Wednesday… and I remembered everything, and I felt I was morally deformed, vile, loathsome… I went off and hit the bottle…
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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…
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Act Four
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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.
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ANDREY: Oh where is it now, where has my past gone, the time when I was young, merry, clever, when I had fine thoughts, fine dreams, when my present and my future were lit up by hope? […] [People] just eat, drink, sleep, then they die […] and in order not to be dulled by boredom, they diversify their life with vile gossip, vodka, cards, law suits, and the wives deceive their husbands and the husbands lie, pretend they see nothing and hear nothing, and an irremediably coarse influence weighs down on the children […] The present is repulsive, but when I think of the future how wonderful things become! There’s a feeling of ease, of space; and in the distance there’s a glimmer of the dawn, I see freedom […] from the ignoble life of a parasite.
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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!
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VERSHININ: What else can I say to you as a goodbye? What bit of philosophy?… [Laughs.] Life is a heavy load. Many of us find it blank, hopeless, but still one has to admit it is becoming brighter and easier every day, and one can see the time is not far off when it will be filled with light. [Looking at his watch.] I must go, I must! Once humanity was occupied with wars, filling the whole of its existence with campaigns, invasions, victories, all that has now had its day, and left behind a huge empty space, which for the time being there is nothing to fill; humanity is passionately seeking that and of course will find it. Oh, if only it could be quick about it!
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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!
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