The Darling

Ivan Petrovich Kukin is Olga’s first husband. As with Olga and her second husband, Pustovalov, he is a static archetype. This flat character has one passion—the theater—which also relates to his one governing character trait: frustration at the causes of his failing business. This is conveyed through constant rants. He is introduced “in despair” about the rain, which he calls “a noose! It’s bankruptcy! Every day terrible losses!” (1). This hyperbolic language is intended to be comic. Kukin sees symptoms of his failure wherever he looks. Whether it is the rain or his “chief enemy—the indifferent public” (2), everything is trying to sabotage him. Chekhov literalizes this idea through the symbol of Kukin’s illness.

Despite living “a good life” together and making money, Kukin “grew skinnier and yellower and complained about terrible losses” (3). The juxtaposition between Olga’s health—she gains weight during this same period—and Kukin’s decline emphasizes that his symptoms are psychosomatic. His illness also remains unidentified. This was a deliberate choice, and a symbolic one; Chekhov was a doctor and would have been able to accurately apply any number of diagnoses to his character, and yet the unnamed illness is only clearly linked with the color yellow. Yellow traditionally symbolizes cowardice, skinniness, and poverty. Kukin is in a constant state of fear that his business will fail, which would leave him destitute. As he turns “skinnier and yellower”(3), he physically embodies his worst apprehensions.

The theme of Isolation and Despair functions differently for Kukin than Olga. He is isolated and despairing both before and within their marriage, whereas she feels this way only when she is single and alone. Kukin’s inability to share his wife’s health and happiness at their good life is a psychological rather than physical form of isolation that leads to despair. This failure to assess his actual situation is tragicomically echoed by the garbled telegram delivering news of his death: Funeral is spelt “humeral,” and there is a meaningless word, “mirst,” which Olga has no idea how to interpret (4). In life, Kukin’s speeches were exaggerated and inaccurate, so in death, the language around him is equally distorted.

Vassily Andreich Pustovalov is the third flat, archetypal character. As Olga’s second husband, several of his characteristics are set up to juxtapose with those of Kukin. Whereas Kukin is an entertainer, Pustovalov has a far more prosaic job as a lumber merchant. Kukin’s passion for theater stands in contrast with Pustovalov’s disdain: “Her husband did not like entertainment of any sort and stayed home on Sundays” (6). Whereas Kukin grows “skinnier and yellower” (3), constantly worrying about money, Pustovalov wears “a straw hat and a white waistcoat with a gold chain, and looked more like a landowner than a dealer” (5). In other words, he spends disposable income on his appearance in a way that would horrify Kukin. Pustovalov’s greater freedom with money is further emphasized by Chekhov’s description of his and Olga’s diet:

At home they ate fancy breads and various preserves, and then ate pastry. Each day at noon, in the yard, and in the street outside the gates, there was a savory smell of borscht and roast lamb or duck, or, on fast days, of fish, and one could not pass the gate without feeling hungry. The samovar was always boiling in the office, and customers were treated to tea and bagels (6).

This diction creates a sense of wealth and abundance. Breads are unnecessarily “fancy,” meat is expensive, and Pustovalov’s customers are given special treatment through food and drink.

Pustovalov is also a religious man. The only reason he leaves the house, aside from business, is to attend church services. A supporting detail arises in one line of dialogue—the only time he is characterized by his own speech, rather than Olga’s or third-person narration—in which he comforts Olga after Kukin’s death: “There is order in all things […] if one of our relations dies, it means that it’s God’s will, and […] we must recollect ourselves and bear it with submission” (5). The religious devotion of this sentiment, combined with Pustovalov’s lack of dialogue, creates the impression of a terse, serious man who is free of Kukin’s anxieties as well as his passions.

Vladimir Platonych Smirnin is the third man Olga is drawn to, but she never marries him. He has an unfaithful wife, to whom he sends money for the upkeep of their son. Whereas Kukin and Pustovalov are both static, Smirnin changes over time. When first introduced, he is young, hates his wife, and lives an itinerant life as a regimental veterinarian. A page and a half later, but years in narrative terms, he returns to town “gray-haired now and in civilian dress” (10). He has “made up with his wife” and wants “to live a sedentary life” (11).

Through their brief romantic entanglement, Smirnin maintains his independence from Olga more fiercely than either Kukin or Pustovalov. She works in the respective businesses of both her husbands, but when she so much as starts discussing veterinary science in front of Smirnin’s guests, he “would be terribly embarrassed, and […] would seize her by the arm” (8). While this serves as evidence of the patriarchal culture that has prevented Olga from forming her own personality and interests in the first place, it also shows how others have enabled her to continue depending on them for cues on how to think and act: Smirnin commands her not to “talk about things you don’t understand” (9). This in turn shuts off one of the main avenues through which she expresses Love and Dependence: repeating her loved one’s opinions.

Indeed, Smirnin is the most independent, self-sufficient character in the story. He maintains his Agency and Individual Identity, even though he is isolated in the sense that he cannot put down roots: His regiment can order him to travel wherever they need him, he cannot marry Olga, he does not trust his wife, and he does not get to see his son, at least early on in the story. Despite these circumstances, Smirnin’s internal sense of self is strong enough to prevent him from falling into despair. This independence is conveyed through dialogue. In contrast to the way Kukin speaks (with hyperbolic pessimism), Smirnin is rigorously practical: “I want to settle here for good […] it’s time my son went to school […] I’m going around looking for lodgings” (11). Each of these short, declarative phrases expresses a concrete, realistic plan. It is this realism that defines Smirnin’s self-sufficiency.