The Darling Flashcards
by Anton Chekhov — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: The Darling
What is Kukin's occupation, and how does Olenka first meet him?
He manages an open-air theatre called the Tivoli and lives in a lodge near Olenka's house. She falls in love after listening to his constant complaints about the weather and the public.
How does Olenka learn of Kukin's death?
She receives a telegram from Moscow with a garbled message: "IVAN PETROVITCH DIED SUDDENLY TO-DAY. AWAITING IMMATE INSTRUCTIONS FUFUNERAL TUESDAY."
How does Olenka meet her second husband, Pustovalov?
He walks her home from church three months after Kukin's funeral. An elderly matchmaker visits soon after, and within days Pustovalov proposes.
How does Pustovalov die?
He goes out into the yard without a cap on a winter day, catches cold, and dies after four months of illness.
Why does Olenka's relationship with the veterinary surgeon Smirnin end?
His regiment is transferred to a distant place (possibly Siberia), and he departs permanently, leaving Olenka alone.
What causes Olenka to revive after years of solitude?
Smirnin returns with his wife and son Sasha, and Olenka offers them her house. She falls deeply in love with the boy and takes over his care.
What is the final image of the story?
Olenka goes to bed dreaming of Sasha's future, wakes in terror at a knock she fears is a telegram summoning Sasha away, then feels relief when it's just the veterinary surgeon coming home from the club.
What is Olenka's full name and patronymic?
Olga Semyonovna Plemyannikova. She is the daughter of a retired collegiate assessor.
How does Kukin's personality contrast with Olenka's?
Kukin is thin, anxious, and perpetually despairing about his theatre business, while Olenka is plump, warm, and radiantly content when attached to someone.
What kind of man is Pustovalov, and how does he differ from Kukin?
He is a dignified, pious timber merchant who looks "more a country gentleman than a man in trade." Unlike the dramatic Kukin, he is calm, sedately religious, and practical.
Why is Smirnin separated from his wife?
She had been unfaithful to him. He hates her and sends forty roubles a month for their son's maintenance.
How does Sasha respond to Olenka's devotion?
He is embarrassed by her attention, telling her "You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the rest of the way alone" and calling out "Oh, do leave me alone!"
How does the story's structure reinforce its theme of codependency?
The same cycle -- attachment, absorption of the partner's worldview, loss, emptiness -- repeats three times with increasing speed, showing the pattern is compulsive rather than accidental.
What does Chekhov suggest about identity through Olenka's periods of solitude?
Without a partner, Olenka literally cannot form opinions or know what to talk about, suggesting her selfhood depends entirely on external attachment rather than any inner resources.
How does Olenka's love for Sasha differ from her previous attachments?
The narrator describes it as the most spontaneous, disinterested, and joyous feeling she has ever experienced -- maternal rather than romantic, and not based on mirroring a partner's profession.
What tension exists between selfless love and loss of self in the story?
Olenka's total devotion could be read as beautiful self-sacrifice or as a pathological inability to exist independently -- Chekhov refuses to resolve which interpretation is correct.
What narrative technique does Chekhov use to present Olenka's borrowed opinions?
Free indirect discourse -- the narrator blends Olenka's voice with his own, so her parroted opinions about theatre, timber, or cattle disease sound as though she genuinely holds them.
What is ironic about Olenka speaking "with perfect sincerity" about each partner's business?
She speaks with total conviction each time, yet the reader sees that her passionate beliefs are completely interchangeable -- she will abandon them entirely for the next partner's interests.
To what animal does Chekhov compare Olenka, and why?
A hen that stays awake all night when the rooster is absent. The simile captures her anxious inability to function without her partner present.
How does the narrator's tone shift over the course of the story?
It moves from gentle mockery in the early sections (the theatre and timber episodes) toward genuine pathos in the final section with Sasha, making the ending emotionally ambiguous.
What does "collegiate assessor" mean in the context of Olenka's father?
It was a mid-level rank in the Russian imperial civil service (Table of Ranks), indicating her family is modest gentry -- respectable but not wealthy or influential.
What are "weepers" that Olenka wears after Pustovalov's death?
Long black mourning veils or crepe bands attached to a widow's hat or dress, signaling formal bereavement in 19th-century Russian custom.
What does "wormwood" mean when Chekhov says Olenka's emptiness was "bitter as wormwood"?
Wormwood is an intensely bitter herb. The simile conveys that Olenka's life without opinions or attachments is not merely empty but actively painful.
What is the significance of the line: "An island is a piece of land which is entirely surrounded by water"?
It is Sasha's geography lesson that Olenka repeats -- the narrator calls it "the first opinion to which she gave utterance with positive conviction after so many years," highlighting both the absurdity and the pathos of her need.
What does Olenka mean when she says, "But, Voloditchka, what am I to talk about?"
After Smirnin scolds her for repeating veterinary opinions at dinner, her genuine bewilderment reveals she has no thoughts of her own -- she can only speak in the language of whoever she loves.