Uncle Vanya
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Uncle Vanya
Anton Chekhov's play in four acts, first staged by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899. A retired professor and his young second wife come to live on the country estate that his brother-in-law Vanya has spent his life managing for him, and their summer there unsettles everyone in the house.
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Uncle Vanya grew out of The Wood Demon, a play Chekhov wrote in 1889 and later reworked almost entirely; the new version was published in 1897 and first staged by the Moscow Art Theatre in October 1899. Ivan Voitski, Uncle Vanya, has spent his life running a country estate with his niece Sonia, sending its income to his brother-in-law, Professor Serebrakoff, whose work he once revered. When the retired professor comes to live on the estate with his beautiful young second wife, Helena, the household’s routine falls apart. Vanya comes to believe he has wasted his life on a man who is a fraud, and falls hopelessly for Helena, as does the country doctor Astroff, whom Sonia loves in silence. Little happens and everything changes: the quarrels, confessions and a plan to sell the estate end where they began, with Sonia’s speech of patient hope, among the most famous closing lines in the theatre.
Characters
Ivan (Vanya) Voitski — Manager of the estate
Brother of the professor’s late first wife, who has run the estate for Serebrakoff all his life and now believes it has all been wasted.
Alexander Serebrakoff — Retired professor
A gouty, self-important scholar who, in Vanya’s view, has been writing on art for twenty-five years without understanding the first thing about it.
Helena — Serebrakoff’s wife
His beautiful second wife, twenty-seven years old, bored and restless in the country, whose presence unsettles every man in the house.
Sonia — Serebrakoff’s daughter
His daughter by his first marriage, plain and hard-working, who runs the estate with Vanya and loves Astroff.
Michael Astroff — Doctor
An overworked country doctor who drinks too much, plants forests and grieves over the felling of Russia’s woods.
Mme. Voitskaya — Vanya’s mother
Widow of a privy councillor and mother of the professor’s first wife, who reveres him and spends her days with her pamphlets.
Ilia Telegin — Impoverished landowner
Known as Waffles for his pock-marked face, Sonia’s godfather, who lives on the estate and plays the guitar.
Marina — Old nurse
The household’s old nurse, who knits, pours the tea and keeps the house going whatever happens.
About the author
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, and a doctor by training. Born in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, the grandson of a serf, he paid his way through medical school in Moscow by writing comic sketches for magazines, and went on to write hundreds of stories, from those early humorous pieces to the quiet masterpieces of his later years, such as “The Lady with the Dog”. In 1890 he crossed Siberia to the penal colony on Sakhalin Island and wrote a study of it. His four great plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, were staged by the Moscow Art Theatre and changed modern drama, putting ordinary lives, and what goes unsaid in them, at the centre of the stage. Ill with tuberculosis for much of his adult life, he died at Badenweiler in Germany in 1904, aged forty-four.