Thanks, Jerri. This is a small point, but I'm wondering what we are to make of Dmitry's wife's omission of the "hard sign" at the end of words in her letters and her calling him Dimitry rather than Dmitry.
Thanks, Jerri. This is a small point, but I'm wondering what we are to make of Dmitry's wife's omission of the "hard sign" at the end of words in her letters and her calling him Dimitry rather than Dmitry.
My guess (and it is only a guess based on some tangential knowledge of Russian culture) is that this is supposed to indicate a "progressive" woman for the times, one who is not a keeper of the domestic hearth and the good old ways,not necessarily an intellectual, but one who pulls away from the old-fashioned, masculine world that her husband prefers, and is desexed in his eyes, which is why he would prefer someone elegant, feminine, younger.
Thank you. That certainly seems plausible given the context. Those quirks would undoubtedly have signified something about her to Chekov's contemporaries, but we can only guess. Regardless of what may be lost to us, the story remains a particular favorite of mine.
Thanks, Jerri. This is a small point, but I'm wondering what we are to make of Dmitry's wife's omission of the "hard sign" at the end of words in her letters and her calling him Dimitry rather than Dmitry.
My guess (and it is only a guess based on some tangential knowledge of Russian culture) is that this is supposed to indicate a "progressive" woman for the times, one who is not a keeper of the domestic hearth and the good old ways,not necessarily an intellectual, but one who pulls away from the old-fashioned, masculine world that her husband prefers, and is desexed in his eyes, which is why he would prefer someone elegant, feminine, younger.
Thank you. That certainly seems plausible given the context. Those quirks would undoubtedly have signified something about her to Chekov's contemporaries, but we can only guess. Regardless of what may be lost to us, the story remains a particular favorite of mine.