polvosederia asked: yes in original script it's given that lopakhin is in love with varya. i think it's like everywhere in chekhov works - a person feel something but can't show it, he can't make a decision or he didn't really want it. Lopakhin's words for Varya"Ohmelia, go to the monastery!" also mean something.
About Ranevskaya - his words when he tells that the cherry orchard is now his property. it's not love. it's victory. Well may be there is no love at all.
Can you point me to where he explicitly says that he is in love with Varya? (Act, Scene, Line reference if you can, please) There is a big difference between what a character says about himself and what others say about him. I’m just curious because this seems to have always escaped me.
You are quite right about the significance of the line about the monastery you mention - it is a quotation from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (III.1. 129 and following). In the original context it is charged with a number of different meanings: Hamlet may want to protect Ophelia, or to chastise her; to mock her; to reject her affections - whether for her own good or not; to provoke her to reveal her part in Polonius’ set-up, etc. It is also generally interpreted as a manifestation of Hamlet’s latent misogyny (although personally I think things are a little more complex in the early modern view of women than we assume).
Lopakhin actually misquotes that line - perhaps because, as he repeatedly points out, he is uneducated (and proud of it, although his insistence that it’s ok to be uneducated betrays some anxiety). He may be using this quotation to prove a point (that he is just as knowledgeable as Trofimov, or that all this intellectual wisdom is pointless in the face of current circumstances), to make a joke (perhaps aimed at Varya’s monastic seriousness but also at her mother’s promiscuity), or to reveal the inner conflict of his feelings for women - attraction and repulsion at the same time.
I agree with you that his revelation to Ranevskaya is a victory speech. I have seen that played convincingly as both a socio-economical victory, and a success in repressing his nostalgia for the past (think of the symbolic weight of chopping down the orchard, literally cutting off the roots), which, as I have argued, is one and the same as love for the Countess, but would also equate - in metaphorical terms - to a return to a situation in which he is bound to the estate and the family through a contract, only this time it’s a contract of marriage rather than serfdom. In this respect, I would be happy to see a version of the play in which he buys the orchard and doesn’t marry Varya because he doesn’t want to be tied to the family anymore. I would find this logical (albeit sad).
Personally (and it is only a personal preference) I think the idea that Lopakhin is really in love with Varya but can’t propose to her because he’s clumsy or something doesn’t really do justice to the depth and layers with which Chekhov works.
Chekhov’s characters are full of contradictions and open-ended possibilites, which makes them so interesting to watch (and to play). Very little is explained, but to what extent can we *explain* ourselves, our feelings, our actions? Of course part of the joy is in the difference of interpretation, and I can tell you that years and years ago, when I first read the play, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to think in these terms.
Maybe there is no love at all, but let’s keep an open mind (there is a lot of love in Chekhov’s short stories, although it’s rarely the love we see in Hollywood films).
Thank you for this interesting discussion :)
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