Love and Marriage Theme Analysis

In The Three Sisters, each of the Prozorov sisters offers a different perspective on the relationship between love and marriage. For Olga, marriage is more practical than romantic; for Masha, love and marriage are quickly decoupled as she outgrows the husband of her youth; and for Irina, romantic love doesn’t survive the death of her girlish idealism. Through the sisters’ very different experiences, Chekov suggests that love is as varied as human beings, and that love and marriage do not necessarily go together—in fact, they seldom do.

For Olga, the idea of marriage is a practical matter, not a romantic quest for a soulmate. Early in the play, Olga complains about her job by saying, “Life is good, everything in life comes from God, but I think it would be better if I were to marry and be sitting at home all day. […] I’d love my husband.” Significantly, the love  she imagines sharing with her husband is an afterthought—the real attraction of marriage is relief from unrewarding toil. After Irina’s emotional breakdown due to a series of unfulfilling jobs, Olga urges her sister to marry Baron Tuzenbakh, since after all “we marry not for love but just to do our duty,” and Olga herself would marry whomever proposed to her, “provided only he was a decent man.” This is further proof of Olga’s pragmatic outlook on marriage (or at least the outlook for which she’s settled)—marriage is merely a means of fulfilling one’s conventional duty.

On the night of the fire, Kulygin (Masha’s husband, to whom she is ill-matched) tells Olga that if it hadn’t been for Masha, he would have been drawn to her instead: “I’m exhausted. My dear little Olga…I often think, if there hadn’t been Masha, I would have married you, Olechka. You’re very nice…I’m worn out.” It’s a passing remark under emotionally strained circumstances, and it’s no passionate declaration. However, in keeping with Olga’s own pragmatism, it suggests that for one reason or another, people simply miss out on spouses to whom they might have been more contentedly matched. In other words, marriage doesn’t have to be a mating of perfectly matched souls in order to be worthwhile and satisfying.

Masha, the only sister who is actually married during the play, is a passionate lover, but an unfaithful and loveless wife. Masha tells Vershinin, “I was married when I was eighteen and I was frightened of [Kulygin] because he was a schoolmaster and I’d barely finished school. He seemed to me then terribly learned, clever and important. But now, unfortunately, it’s rather different.” Implicitly, Masha married because she wanted someone whose intelligence she could respect; but when her own intellect matured, she felt she had outgrown Kulygin, and now life is “cursed, intolerable.” Her desire for intellectual companionship leads her to pursue an affair with Vershinin, suggesting that when people view marriage as a selfish means to an end, the marital bond is easily undermined by individuals’ growth and change.

Kulygin continues to love Masha even after she has begun her affair and is coldly unresponsive to his affections. When Vershinin is about to leave with his army brigade, he kisses Masha goodbye. Her husband, Kulygin, walks in on the kiss, and though he’s embarrassed, he accepts Masha as his wife and doesn’t reproach her infidelity: “It doesn’t matter, let her cry, just let her…My sweet Masha, my good Masha…You are my wife and I am happy in spite of everything … […] We will begin to live again as we used to and I won’t say one word to you, not a hint…” Amazingly, Kulygin recommits himself to Masha even as she’s weeping for another man. Kulygin’s and Masha’s broken marriage shows that even if one spouse passionately loves the other, a marriage is bound to be dysfunctional if that love is not reciprocated.

For Irina, love is an expression of a deeper idealism about the world. When her perfect scenario of finding true love doesn’t work out as planned, then, she ends up compromising for a marriage that is sensible, practical, and devoid of passion. Irina’s main suitor is Baron Tuzenbakh, with whom she has often conversed about the hypothetical joys of a working life. He tells her: “I look at you now and I remember how, long ago, on your name-day, you were talking of the joys of work, full of enthusiasm and cheer…And what a vision I had then of a happy life! Where has it gone? […] If only I were allowed to give up my life for you!” For Irina, daydreams of marriage were tied up with her idealism about work. When the latter faded, so did her appetite for the former.

When pragmatic Olga encourages Irina to marry Tuzenbakh anyway, Irina replies that she’d dreamed of finding and marrying her true love in Moscow; but now that the dream of Moscow has “turned out to be nonsense,” Irina contents herself with a sensible marriage to a man she doesn’t love. For her, the ideal marriage fits in to a broader dream, and when the dream dies, there’s no longer any sense in waiting to fall in love. Later, on the eve of their marriage, Tuzenbakh tells Irina that his dreams will come true, and she will be happy. He knows she doesn’t love him, though. Irina weeps, “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.” That is, Irina’s ability to love lies dormant and inaccessible. Again, because love and idealism are so connected for her, the death of her dreams makes love an impossibility.

There are no happy marriages among the three Prozorov sisters. At the end of the play, it looks as if Irina and Tuzenbakh might be able to find happiness together, despite the unevenness of their feelings for each other. However, at the last moment, Tuzenbakh is killed in a duel by another of Irina’s suitors. This leaves the long-term viability of the union ambiguous, and further confirms Chekov’s point that a fully happy marriage, much less a romantically successful one, is exceedingly difficult to find.