Peasant Wives dwells on the unfaithfulness of women, and in Agafya he reverts to the style and plot of The Witch.
Gusev is a horrible story of a man dying at sea: when dead his body is sewn up and thrown into the water, where he is eaten by a shark.
In the Ravine is a picture of a girl not very different in her calculated brutality and heartlessness from Regan and Goneril: it is one of the most powerful stories that Tchehov ever wrote.
As a short story-writer Tchehov stands in a unique position. He relies very little on plot, he is interested only in characters: every one of his creations stands out definitely and clearly, and though he points no moral it is easy to come to quite certain conclusions with regard to his own view on life.
He obviously regards women as frail, easily dissatisfied, just as he looks upon the men of his age as invertebrate, lacking in energy, ideals, or any sense of the nobility of work.
His scenic descriptions are clear-cut and beautiful, not less effective because they are so sparingly used.
He is obviously puzzled by the why and wherefore of existence, and refuses to shut his eyes when he finds himself confronted by uncomfortable truths.
But his main feature is his incurable optimism. He has no very great opinion of the men of his own day, but it is easy to see that he has unbounded faith in the future, and to stigmatise such a writer as "gloomy" only betrays the impotence and wrong-headedness of the critic.
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation has been left as written.
Dialect has been left as written, e.g. täake. However obvious typos (outside of speech) have been corrected.