Chekhov & Marx: the Riddle of "A Woman's Kingdom"

Chekhov’s stories and plays transcend any single point of view or system of analysis. Much, however, can be gained from the application of a particular lens toward organizing a pattern of understanding and focusing details of content and structure, attitude and atmosphere. A “Marxist” lens applies in many ways, from the simplest fundamental agreements in both men’s observations of their complicated and fast-changing world, to a deeper and more enigmatic probing of how this ideological mechanism operates at all levels of existence, especially through the choices and actions of the individual. For both Marx and Chekhov alienation is the primary effect of the reigning system of capitalism and it is characterized by volatile and shattering contradictions that result in suffering.

Many of Chekhov’s titles appear at first to highlight in a literal sense some obvious aspect of what the stories describe. Afterward, the seemingly straightforward title can be understood as a contradiction and comment on the previous understanding and its inherent assumptions, becoming the instantiation of an entirely new and different point of view.

For example, in “The Russian Master,” Nikitin is master in name only—simply from marrying a girl with a substantial dowry. He is not a master within his profession, of any of his slighter interests, or of the wife he thought he controlled. He briefly imagines himself to be the author of his own fleeting happiness. By the end of the story he is so little master of himself that he begs to be overwhelmed by something that would render him into a better person—by which he means relieved of his suffering.

Chekhov repeatedly refers to Nikitin as acting and appearing young—too young. It is a device to hide the character’s immaturity in plain view, Nikitin’s concept of sufferingis also too young—immature—he is as yet unable and unwilling to comprehend or instantiate the idea of suffering except through external conditions, Nikitin stands at the great threshold of Chekhov’s rich cosmos, ready to tke the first steps in once he sees the pointless contradiction of blaming the world for being itself.

Olenka, the “Darling” of the story of the same name, is in fact a vampire—sucking the life out of those she claims to adore, taking on their attributes of character and interest as the metaphoric stolen blood courses refreshingly through her own body. Her ‘goodness’ is entirely self-serving; she is destructive primordial unconsciousness. She never suffers; it is those upon whom she settles her draining gaze who wither away and die.

“A Woman’s Kingdom” will turn out to be anything but for Anna Akimovna, the young and beautiful heiress who discovers the true nature of the world she appears to own and the painful limits of her ability to make demands of life or of herself.

In each case, title and story are much more than merely ironic. Reality itself is turned on its head. The reader’s awakened consciousness, not a proverbial happy or sad outcome, is the goal of Chekhov’s masterful efforts. A conventional ending is never possible. Chekhov exploits the very idea of convention and ordinariness and does so with characters and settings so seemingly unexceptional that this very aspect is the means by which the extraordinary is hidden in plain sight. The stories articulate the contradictions, uncertainty and arbitrariness of the foundations of what is perceived as real and meaningful, illuminating Marx’s contention that the perception of reality is the result of the social relations of a given time expressed through that era’s mode of production. These social relations are what Anna Akimovna cannot overcome. She, like everyone, is caught in the alienation that makes each of them a commodity and player in the game of social reality, simultaneously sincere and false.

In Marx’s description and prognosis for the capitalist system, an increasing few, like Anna Akimovna, own and control the means and materials of production. The worker is separated from the meaningful pursuit of work related to his/her own existence, environment, personal needs and individual abilities; s/he becomes a means to an end. Reduced to a wage earner, the worker’s value resides in the value of his/her labor; surplus value—production and profit beyond the necessary amount to maintain life—is the property of the capitalist. No matter how much product the laborer makes, s/he earns no more, though earning less is certainly possible and likely.

It is in the interest and within the ability of the capitalist to increase the amount of production by improving the system of production—specialization and technology—in which s/he is willing to invest. This, however, invariably results in the ultimate decrease of the exchange value of the product made and a decrease in the wages earned by the laborer. As Marx predicted, the result is increasingly violent alternations of plenty and want, ever more unevenly distributed. The only things shared by all under this system are alienation and the loss of personal expression and freedom. Chekhov is clear in his depiction of these ruinous forces running rampant through all levels of society.

By the end of the 19th century conditions were such that it was already evident that Marx’s assessment of the capitalist system was correct in his description of its failure to address the spiritual, political and economic needs of a rapidly increasing and vastly more interconnected modern population.

Chekhov saw in his own family the entire spectrum from boom to bust, the exceedingly uneven distribution of the few benefits and enormous losses. His grandfather and father were serfs, his father had managed to purchase his freedom prior to Alexander II’s Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 (Chekhov was thereby born “free” in 1860); the father became briefly a successful lower middle-class shop merchant. Yet before Chekhov had completed High School his father had gone bankrupt and fled to Moscow to avoid creditors. From an early age, Chekhov would spend the rest of his life supporting himself and his family with the proceeds from his writing. Independent of the errors Chekhov’s father may have made to contribute to his own ruin, the system itself was proving to be anything but a dream come true. The volatility of the markets predicted by Marx had encouraged many factory owners to torch their own establishments in order to collect insurance money and offset losses from speculation. Before the glistening benefits of mass-production, the wide distribution of products and education to improve life had time even to begin to tarnish, the system was already in decline.

In “A Woman’s Kingdom,” Anna Akimovna already knows that the industrial empire created by her uncle and overseen by her father is falling to pieces under her tenure, though not specifically from her neglect or personal error—she still employs the same managers as her uncle and father to operate the factory. But they are mostly corrupt and she neither knows about nor likes the business from which she derives her enormous income; everything about it is abhorrent to her. More and more money is spent each year on the maintenance of the workers’ lives and living quarters, yet whose sorry lot nonetheless continues to deteriorate.

In this detail Chekhov resonates with the Marxist belief that this system itself cannot prosper and endure. Within this story is the ironic detail that the only representative group that thrives and endures are the Chalikovs, the impoverished unemployed clerk/charlatan/beggar, his numerous progeny and yet again pregnant wife. Had Chekhov lived longer he might have written of Chalikov’s eventual victorious emergence as a financial services scam artist or some other of the forms of business characters made possible at the ragged margins of the destructive course of capitalism.

Ostensibly, “A Woman’s Kingdom” centers upon Anna Akimovna’s awakened desire for love and a family of her own—the kingdom she desires is the realm of the hearth, not the huge industrial enterprise of which she is mistress by the accident of inheritance. Regretfully, she imagines other women her own age from more modest backgrounds who are happily exhausted and abundantly fulfilled in the loving work of raising children; she does not consider the one-sided and idealistic viewpoint entailed in this dream. A chance meeting reveals a man, Pimenov, upon whom she can project her fantasies of simple and uncomplicated romance, but he is far beneath her station. In fact, he is a foreman at the factory she owns. Over the course of two days—the day before and, principally, Christmas Day and its “two” dinners—she will test the limits of her resolve and the world’s compliance and will end empty-handed and alone, despite all her wealth and privilege. Several compromises will be offered to the terms she dictates, but it will be she who cannot say yes to life, who cannot imagine a life outside of the conventions that she obeys without believing in.

Chekhov employs his usual cunning in introducing Anna Akimovna in the middle of a quandary that subtly suggests that we sympathize with her plight. She is young, attractive, rich and idle; she is not without awareness or conscience, yet her actions never correspond to what she presumably knows to be true and right. Chekhov constantly contrasts characters and situations to amplify the mystifying uncertainty and violent oscillations that correspond to the manifestation of alienation within oneself.

Early in the story Anna Akimovna looks down from her window on the numerous factory workers, bareheaded in the snow-filled courtyard of her palatial house, pleading her forgiveness. These employees were fired by her manager for absenteeism. Anna Akimovna is too ashamed to go out to them and instead lets them be driven away like dogs, into the darkness and cold. Later, in her widowed and childless aunt’s downstairs domain within the huge house, she will participate in the charade of censure for the drunken driver whom the aunt will pretend to dismiss and then quickly forgive and re-integrate into the familial feudal realm of the lower floor—all done with a pointless wink to Anna as the true sovereign of the new order. Yet she has had no say, one way or the other.

In the description of the house itself Chekhov subtly incarnates the contrasting social orders. The vibrant remnant of the feudal, integrated past lives out its last glimmerings in the downstairs quarters where the old aunt resides with a cozy and populous entourage within a strictly defined hierarchy. The palatial upper rooms were originally built and furnished only for use as an entertaining stage for special guests and the social scenarios that are part of the script of the successful life of a wealthy capitalist. In these glittering and sumptuous upper rooms Anna Akimovna now lives, alone with her servants and chef.

Chalikov and his family live far away in a poor old house divided into numerous overcrowded apartments, reminiscent of the humble world into which Anna Akimovna was born. Chance and fate brought her early in life to the palatial house and her role as mistress. She cannot justify her two realms, she longs for the simplicity she imagines was present in her humble past, yet is entirely a creature and product of her position and wealth.

Chekhov creates a stunning opposition in the characters of Chalikov and Anna Akimovna’s lawyer, Lysevich, one of the principal guests at her French Upstairs dinner. Both are devious; both lie; both want money. Ultimately it is Chalikov’s style that offends Anna Akimovna; he is cloyingly ingratiating and too knowing to play his part as supplicant innocently and well. Despite the actual reality of his need she ends up not giving him the large sum of cash that has happenstancely fallen into her hands at the opening of the story. Instead, she gives the money to Lysevich, who is independently wealthy and has no need for the money, yet asks for it in a manner that is subtly humiliating to Anna Akimovna, implying that it is she who has been cruel and neglectful. Ultimately it is Lysevich’s style that pleases Anna Akimovna, and she pays up knowing it will contribute toward nothing of worth.

One of Marx’s contentions about the lives of all under a system of alienation is that the final redoubt of action devolves to the animal necessities: eating, drinking and the acts of reproduction—sacred or profane. Chalikov is always eating or bringing more impoverished and needy souls into the world; Lysevich is a glutton, though only for better cuisine; Anna Akimovna is consumed with a desire to express her true feminine nature, but not willing to pay the price. In all of Anna Akimovna’s tiny, glittering realm no one can generate a literal future: there are no children. The guests at the upstairs dinner are old or impotent disinterested men; the women at the downstairs dinner are also old and well past the prime of life and the few men are drunkards or servants. What Anna Akimovna’s class is good at bringing into the world are the products and displays of culture. Though this is not without meaning, it is not what she actually desires. Anna Akimovna knows that it will be her fate to fail at her last attempt to enter into the continuum of life.

Pimenov becomes the object of her re-awakening. Chekhov shows how this man alone among all the other characters has managed to retain some hold on his own integrity, the integrity that Marx declares is nearly if not entirely impossible to maintain in the awful distortion of economic exploitation. Chekhov refers often to Pimenov’s great physical strength—presumably an emblem of his potential to fulfill Anna Akimovna’s feminine desire, but his greatest strength is seen in the clockworks, watches and tools neatly and lovingly preserved in his simple room. These are the symbols of his re-unification with self, work he does from love and interest and not solely for someone else’s profit. It is not facetious or for show, as with Chalikov and Lysevich, when he tells Anna Akimovna that for her he will make an exception and offers to repair her elegant watch.

In this sense Pimenov is “rich” and Anna Akimovna is “poor” because the supposedly valuable treasure and commodities that compose her world have no exchange value for that which she actually desires. It goes without saying that, in this story, Pimenov’s humble worthiness is not to be rewarded and that Lysevich’s elegantly entertaining unworthiness is promptly, and handsomely, paid for.

At the downstairs dinner an old crone called the Beetle along with all the other women lament the waste of Anna Akimovna’s youth, beauty and wealth, explaining how she might have the experience she desires, even if that should include marrying a simple common man like Pimenov. In a short-lived and convulsive rush of false freedom Anna Akimovna consents to the Beetle’s offer as matchmaker.

The great sadness of this story is that Anna Akimovna is not blind to Pimenov as a man; it is in considering him as a husband that she cannot keep her strength of will and all her money is of no avail. Pimenov is not acceptable to those who inhabit her world, both the born residents like Lysevich and the other upstairs guests or even her own servants, who co-operate with the punishing system of appearances and raise the price of her desire beyond her understanding.

It is her own simpering butler Misha who acts as tutor to his wayward mistress who momentarily forgets the rules of the game and imagines that she might be able to find happiness in a union with the man she imagines her own father might have heartily approved. Misha “reminds” Anna Akimovna that Pimenov would be a frightening sight at table among the highborn guests, trying to figure out exactly how to hold a dinner fork properly. Surely, it was all a good joke, he cajoles—but his tone is not really that of a question. Yes, of course, is her only possible reply: a joke.

This leads to the strangest and most startling realization, both from the perspective of Marx and of Chekhov. Why is it that Anna Akimovna is so powerless in the pursuit of happiness? In Section 4 of the first volume of “Capital”, Marx describes the extraordinary and enigmatic power of commodities within a capitalist society. It is almost identical to the misleadingly seeming ordinary aspect of Chekhov’s stories:

“A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”

As Marx describes, the fetish power of commodities is not located in our minds but in the social relations themselves comprised within capitalist society. Therefore, despite knowing in our minds that a commodity has no intrinsic power or value, we not only act “as if” it does, but must honor that known misperception—we cannot separate ourselves from it as if it were a mere idea any more than a fish could imagine living on land—because our participation within the dynamic of the entire system is that from which we derive our sense of reality, our sense of self.

Marx offers an “explanation” as to why these characters cannot act in their own best interest and it is far more potent and mysterious than the force of social pressure in the common or naïve interpretation. It is a powerlessness and blindness inherent to the very “rules” of the operating system. These characters are intrinsically divided within themselves owing to their very participation in a particular unavoidable cultural interpretation of “reality” which Chekhov so masterfully weaves into an illuminating and sorrowful work of art.

Blue

When I feel ‘blue’ I wonder what shade it might be.

In a museum, in front of a small immaculate landscape painting, a man I did not know turned to me and said, “In Russian, we have more than forty distinct and separate words describing the color you call ‘blue’. Other people think we are very sad, but Mother Nature makes these words in snow and ice and mist, water and sky. Look!”

Why me? Despite the paltry offering in my native tongue of words describing blue, I know all too well what the Russian is talking about. And, frankly, he is a little sullen, if not altogether sad, but this I also understand, or think I do.

I have excuses or reasons for why I linger so long in all things blue: it is easier on the eyes and there are more colors (and moods) with blue than without; their variety is a delight to discern.

A color wheel is like an upside-down arch; its keystone is the truest blue, betraying no tendency toward yellow or red. Two arms reach up from the blue core, one becomes green on its way to yellow, the other turns purple midway toward its red palm. Above, a narrow slice of blue-free color stretches from pure red to pure yellow, an orange filament of pure joy whose entire expanse is one third of the total wheel. Two thirds of all colors contain some amount of blue; too much of life to ignore.

As night follows day, blue is rest and repose from the exhausting and gorgeous delirium of the brightness that burns out fast, yet lingers in traces like shimmering light on a watery surface, the glimmering turnings of shiny fishes or the fluorescent glissandos of unnamed creatures burrowing deep into the couch of vibrant darkness.