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The Lady with the Dog is one of the best-known short stories by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov. First published in 1899, the story is widely remembered for its subtle portrayal of love, loneliness, marriage, and the conflict between personal feelings and social expectations. Rather than presenting love as a simple romantic experience, Chekhov explores how an unexpected relationship can force people to question the lives they have been living.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian writer, playwright, and physician whose works became highly influential in world literature. He is particularly admired for his psychological realism and his ability to reveal complex human emotions through ordinary situations. Instead of explaining exactly what his characters feel, Chekhov often allows readers to understand them through their conversations, gestures, silences, memories, and changing behaviour.
In The Lady with the Dog, Dmitri Gurov, a married man from Moscow, meets Anna Sergeyevna while staying in Yalta. Anna is also married, and what initially appears to be a temporary romantic encounter gradually develops into something far more serious. After they separate, Gurov expects his feelings to disappear with time. Instead, he discovers that he cannot forget Anna and begins to question his ordinary life, his previous relationships, and even his understanding of love. When they meet again, both realize that their relationship has become an essential part of their lives.
This version has been carefully rewritten for advanced English learners at CEFR C1 level. The original plot, major characters, important events, emotional development, central themes, and unresolved ending have been preserved, while the language has been reconstructed in clear, sophisticated, and natural English. The adaptation is designed to provide a genuine literary reading experience rather than a simplified summary.
Why Should You Study This Story?
Reading The Lady with the Dog in English can help you develop several important C1-level language skills.
First, the story exposes you to advanced and precise vocabulary related to emotions, relationships, personality, social behaviour, and everyday life. You will encounter useful expressions and collocations that can also be valuable in sophisticated conversation, writing, journalism, and academic English.
Second, the story provides substantial practice with complex sentence structures. As you read, you will encounter relative clauses, subordinate clauses, participial constructions, reported speech, conditionals, linking expressions, and varied sentence patterns. Studying these structures in a meaningful literary context can help you understand how advanced English works naturally.
The story is also particularly useful for developing reading comprehension and inference skills. Chekhov does not always state a character’s feelings directly. Instead, emotions are often revealed through behaviour, silence, facial expressions, memories, and small details. As a C1 learner, learning to understand these indirect signals is an important part of advanced reading.
You will also develop your ability to understand tone, atmosphere, irony, and emotional nuance. The story moves between the bright summer atmosphere of Yalta, the quiet landscapes around Oreanda, the cold streets of Moscow, and the tense environment of the theatre. These changes in setting contribute to the emotional development of the characters.
Another important benefit is the opportunity to learn how literary English communicates psychological change. Gurov does not suddenly become a different person. His feelings develop gradually—from curiosity and attraction to attachment, longing, and genuine love. Following this transformation will help you understand vocabulary and expressions connected with emotional development and human relationships.
Finally, the story encourages you to think beyond individual sentences and consider meaning, character, and context. You will encounter questions about love, marriage, secrecy, social expectations, personal identity, loneliness, and the difference between appearance and reality. This makes the story valuable not only for improving your English but also for developing the deeper reading skills expected at C1 level.
By studying The Lady with the Dog, you are not simply learning new English words. You are learning how advanced English is used to describe complex emotions, subtle relationships, inner conflict, atmosphere, and human behaviour.
Read slowly, pay attention to unfamiliar expressions, notice how the characters speak and behave, and try to understand what is suggested rather than only what is explicitly stated. In this way, the story can become both a work of literature and a practical resource for taking your English toward a confident C1 level.
This story has been carefully adapted and rewritten by LearnEnglish-new.com as a C1-level English reader. The original work, “The Lady with the Dog,” by Anton Chekhov is in the public domain. This learner-friendly adaptation uses clear, modern English while preserving the main characters, events, psychological depth, emotional complexity, and central themes of the original story. It is designed to help C1 learners develop advanced reading comprehension, expand their vocabulary, strengthen their grammar skills, and gain a deeper appreciation of literary English. Enjoy reading and improve your English skills!
The Lady with the Dog
By Anton Chekhov
Contents
Chapter One: The Lady with the Little Dog
Chapter Two: A Summer Encounter
Chapter Three: The Morning at Oreanda
Chapter Four: The Memory That Would Not Fade
Chapter Seven: The Beginning of the Difficult Part
Section One
The Lady with the Little Dog
It was said that a new visitor had appeared on the Yalta sea-front: a young lady with a little white dog.
Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had already spent two weeks in Yalta, had become accustomed to watching the people who came and went. From his seat in Verney’s pavilion, he noticed a fair-haired woman of medium height walking slowly along the sea-front. She wore the same beret every day, and a small white Pomeranian followed obediently behind her.
He soon began seeing her everywhere—in the public gardens, in the square, and along the promenade. She was always alone. No one seemed to know who she was, and because of the little dog, everyone referred to her simply as “the lady with the dog.”
Gurov was not yet forty, but he already had a twelve-year-old daughter and two sons at school. He had married young, when he was still a university student. His wife was tall and dignified, with dark eyebrows and a serious manner. She considered herself intellectual and read constantly. She even insisted on using a peculiar form of pronunciation that Gurov found irritating.
He had never felt particularly close to her. In private, he regarded her as narrow-minded and inelegant, and although he was not afraid of many things, he had learned to be cautious around his wife.
For years, Gurov had been unfaithful to her. He had had numerous affairs, and his repeated experiences had made him cynical about women. Whenever women were discussed in his presence, he sometimes referred to them contemptuously as “the lower race.”
Yet his attitude was contradictory. He could not spend more than a few days without becoming interested in some woman. Among men, he was often bored and reserved. He never quite knew what to say. In the company of women, however, he became relaxed and confident. He knew instinctively how to behave, what to say, and when to remain silent.
There was something attractive about him—something difficult to define. Women were drawn to him, and he knew it. He also felt an almost involuntary attraction toward them.
Experience had taught him that affairs which began as light and amusing adventures could eventually become complicated and painful. At first, an unfamiliar woman might bring excitement into his life. Later, however, there would be explanations, demands, jealousy, and awkward obligations.
He knew this perfectly well.
But every time he met someone interesting, he seemed to forget everything he had learned.
The lady with the dog was no exception.
One evening, while Gurov was dining in the gardens, she approached the neighbouring table. He noticed at once that she was probably married, that she was visiting Yalta for the first time, and that she seemed somewhat bored and uncertain.
He remembered the stories people told about places like Yalta—stories about easy romances and strangers who met for a few days and disappeared from one another’s lives. He had always considered most of those stories exaggerated. Nevertheless, sitting only a few steps from this unknown woman, he suddenly felt the familiar temptation of a brief affair.
He called the little dog toward him and playfully held out a finger. The Pomeranian growled.
The woman looked at Gurov and immediately lowered her eyes.
“He doesn’t bite,” she said, blushing slightly.
“May I give him a bone?” Gurov asked.
She nodded.
“Have you been here long?”
“Five days.”
“I’ve already been here for a fortnight.”
There was a short silence.
“Time passes quickly,” she said, “but it is so dull here.”
Gurov smiled.
“People always say that. A person can live for years in some provincial town without complaining of boredom, but as soon as he comes here, he says, ‘How dull! How dusty!’ You would think he had just arrived from paradise.”
She laughed.
After dinner they walked together. Their conversation was light and effortless. They spoke about the sea, whose surface had taken on a soft, violet colour beneath the moon. A narrow golden path of moonlight stretched across the water.
Gurov told her about himself. He was from Moscow, had studied at university, and now worked in a bank. He had once trained as an opera singer but had abandoned the idea. He owned two houses in Moscow.
She told him that she had grown up in Petersburg but had lived in a provincial town called S—— since her marriage two years earlier. She intended to remain in Yalta for another month. Her husband might eventually come to collect her, although she was not even certain what position he held. She thought he worked either for a government department or the provincial administration.
Her name was Anna Sergeyevna.
Later that night, alone in his hotel room, Gurov thought about her.
He imagined that she had probably been a schoolgirl only a few years earlier. There was still something inexperienced in the way she laughed and spoke to a stranger. He suspected that this might be the first time she had travelled alone to a place where people watched her with undisguised curiosity.
He remembered her delicate neck and her grey eyes.
There was something vulnerable about her, he thought.
Something almost sad.
And, without quite understanding why, he fell asleep thinking about her.
Section Two
A Summer Encounter
A week passed after their first meeting.
The weather became unbearably hot. Inside the buildings the air seemed motionless, while outside the wind lifted clouds of dust and sent hats rolling along the streets.
Gurov often went to the pavilion and invited Anna Sergeyevna to have something cold to drink. They had begun spending much of their time together, although neither of them spoke openly about what was happening between them.
One evening they went to the harbour to watch a steamer arrive.
The sea was rough, and the ship was late. A crowd had gathered along the groyne, waiting for passengers and carrying flowers. Anna looked through her lorgnette with the anxious curiosity of someone expecting to recognize a familiar face.
She talked more than usual and asked questions that she seemed to forget almost immediately. At one point she dropped her lorgnette in the crowd.
Eventually the people began to leave.
The evening grew darker.
Anna and Gurov remained where they were, as if they were still waiting for someone.
She stood silently, smelling the flowers in her hands.
“The weather is better this evening,” Gurov said. “Where shall we go?”
She did not answer.
He looked at her closely.
Then, almost without thinking, he put his arm around her and kissed her.
For a moment he was overwhelmed by the scent of the flowers and the closeness of her body. Then he looked around anxiously. The old instinct returned immediately: secrecy, caution, the fear of being seen.
“Let us go to your hotel,” he said quietly.
They walked away together.
The room was small and close, and it smelled of the perfume Anna had bought at a Japanese shop.
Gurov looked at her and was struck by how different she seemed from the women he had known before.
He had known women who entered affairs cheerfully, accepted pleasure without embarrassment, and seemed grateful for whatever happiness he could give them. He had known others, including his wife, who spoke of love in exaggerated language and behaved as though their feelings were part of some great moral drama.
He had also known beautiful women who seemed cold and possessive, determined to demand more from life than it could ever provide.
Anna was different.
There was an awkwardness about her, a hesitation that suggested inexperience. She seemed frightened by what had happened, as though she had crossed an invisible boundary and could no longer return.
Her face became pale.
“It is wrong,” she said. “You will despise me now.”
“How could I despise you?” Gurov replied.
But she seemed unable to accept his reassurance.
There was a silence.
A slice of watermelon lay on the table. Gurov cut a piece and began eating. He did not know what else to do.
Anna lowered her head.
“I am ashamed,” she whispered.
She began to cry.
“It isn’t my husband I have deceived,” she said. “It is myself. I have been deceiving myself for years.”
She told him that she had married when she was twenty. Her husband might be respectable and honest, she said, but she felt no real connection with him. She had always been troubled by the feeling that another kind of life existed somewhere beyond the one she had been given.
“I wanted to live,” she said. “I wanted to know what life could be.”
Her voice trembled.
She had come to Yalta pretending to be ill. She had told her husband that she needed a change of air, but she had really been driven by curiosity and dissatisfaction.
“And now,” she said, “I have become someone I despise.”
Gurov listened with growing impatience. Her remorse seemed naïve to him. He had heard similar confessions before, and part of him was already tired of them.
Yet when he looked into her frightened eyes, he could not remain indifferent.
She pressed herself against him.
“Believe me,” she whispered. “I love a pure and honest life. I hate sin. I don’t know what I am doing.”
He comforted her.
Little by little her anxiety faded. She smiled again, and soon they were laughing together.
Later they left the hotel and found a carriage.
They drove to Oreanda.
The town had become silent. The cypresses stood motionless against the dark sky, while the sea continued to break against the shore with a deep, monotonous sound.
At Oreanda they sat near a church and looked toward the sea.
Yalta was barely visible through the early morning mist. Clouds rested on the mountains. The grass was wet with dew, and the trees were perfectly still.
For a long time neither spoke.
The sea seemed to exist beyond human concerns. It had been there before Yalta, before their lives, before anyone had given names to the mountains and roads. It would remain long after they were gone.
Gurov felt suddenly that human life was painfully brief.
People loved, lied, betrayed one another, worried about money and reputation, and imagined their own lives to be immensely important. Yet the sea remained indifferent.
And still, sitting beside Anna in the pale morning light, he felt that the world was extraordinarily beautiful.
Everything seemed beautiful except what people did when they forgot their own dignity.
A man approached them, probably a caretaker. He looked at them briefly and walked away.
Even this insignificant encounter seemed strangely beautiful to Gurov.
A steamer appeared in the distance, its lights fading as the sun rose.
“There is dew on the grass,” Anna said.
“Yes,” Gurov replied. “We should go home.”
After that morning they began seeing each other every day.
They met at noon, ate together, walked beside the sea, and sometimes drove into the countryside. Anna complained that she could not sleep and that her heart beat violently.
She often asked whether Gurov respected her.
She feared that he thought of her as an ordinary woman.
He assured her that he admired her.
Yet beneath their happiness there remained a quiet uneasiness.
Neither of them knew what their relationship meant.
Neither understood yet that the days they were spending together would change the course of their lives.
Section Three
The Morning at Oreanda
Their days in Yalta acquired a rhythm of their own.
At first Gurov regarded the relationship as temporary. He had known many women, and he assumed that Anna would eventually become another memory.
Yet something about her resisted that easy conclusion.
She was not worldly. She did not know how to conceal her emotions. Her questions were sometimes naïve, and her conscience troubled her constantly.
But she was sincere.
And Gurov gradually found himself drawn not merely to her beauty but to her vulnerability.
One afternoon Anna received a letter from her husband.
There was something wrong with his eyes, he wrote, and he wanted her to return home as soon as possible.
She read the letter several times.
“It is a good thing I am leaving,” she said quietly. “It must be destiny.”
Gurov did not know what to say.
The day of her departure came too quickly.
He travelled with her to the station. They remained together until she had boarded the train.
When the second bell sounded, Anna looked at him for a long moment.
“Let me look at you once more,” she said.
Her face trembled, although she did not cry.
“I shall remember you. Think of you. God be with you. We must never meet again. We should never have met.”
The train began to move.
Its lights disappeared into the distance.
Gurov remained on the platform.
He had the strange sensation of waking from a dream.
It had been a brief adventure, he told himself. Soon it would become only a memory.
Yet even as he tried to convince himself of this, another thought disturbed him.
Anna had not been happy.
He remembered the way she had looked at him, the way she had trusted him, and the strange reverence with which she had spoken about him.
She had believed him to be kinder and more exceptional than he really was.
He had not deliberately deceived her, but he knew that she had created an image of him in her mind that did not quite correspond to reality.
A faint remorse troubled him.
By the time he left the station, the evening had turned cold.
Autumn was already in the air.
“It is time to go north,” he thought.
And he believed that was the end.
Section Four
The Memory That Would Not Fade
Moscow received Gurov with winter.
The stoves were burning. The mornings were dark. His children prepared for school while the nurse moved around the house lighting lamps.
At first he found comfort in returning to familiar surroundings.
He walked along the streets in his warm coat and gloves. He read newspapers, visited restaurants, attended dinners, played cards, and took part in the ordinary social life of Moscow.
Soon he was surrounded by the familiar noise of his old existence.
Yet Anna did not disappear.
He had expected her image to fade within a month.
Instead, the opposite happened.
As winter deepened, his memories became more vivid.
A sound, a song, a storm outside his window, or the voices of his children could suddenly bring back Yalta. He remembered the harbour, the sea, the mountains covered in mist, the early morning at Oreanda, and Anna’s face.
He began to realize that he had been living as though Yalta were a dream.
But the dream had followed him home.
At night he imagined Anna everywhere.
Sometimes he saw her in his study, sometimes near the fireplace, sometimes among the books. In the street he found himself looking at women, searching for someone who resembled her.
He wanted to tell someone about her.
But whom could he trust?
He could not speak to his wife.
He could not speak to his colleagues at the bank.
He could not tell his friends what Anna meant to him.
One evening, leaving the doctors’ club, he mentioned casually to an acquaintance that he had met a fascinating woman in Yalta.
The man barely listened.
Instead, he shouted something about the sturgeon they had eaten that evening.
The triviality of the conversation suddenly disgusted Gurov.
He looked around at the men who surrounded him and saw a life that seemed empty and repetitive: card games, dinners, drinking, gossip, ceremonies, and endless discussions about matters that meant nothing.
He felt trapped.
For the first time, he began to understand that his dissatisfaction was not caused merely by boredom.
Something essential was missing from his life.
Anna had revealed it to him.
He could no longer return comfortably to the existence he had known before.
In December he decided to travel to S——.
He told his wife that he needed to go to Petersburg on business for a young friend.
But he was not going to Petersburg.
He was going to find Anna.
He reached S—— in the morning and took a room at the best hotel available.
The porter told him that Von Diderits lived in a large house on Old Gontcharny Street.
Gurov found the address.
The house stood behind a long grey fence covered with nails.
He stared at it.
“One would run away from a fence like that,” he thought.
He walked up and down the street, uncertain what to do.
Perhaps Anna had forgotten him.
Perhaps she had returned to her ordinary life and was happy enough.
Perhaps she had already found someone else.
These possibilities tormented him.
Then he heard a piano inside the house.
He wondered whether Anna was playing.
The front door opened.
An old woman appeared, followed by the familiar white Pomeranian.
Gurov almost called to the dog.
But his heart began beating so violently that he could not remember its name.
He returned to the hotel.
That evening he went to the theatre.
A poster had announced a performance of The Geisha.
Perhaps, he thought, Anna might attend.
The theatre was crowded.
Gurov watched every person who entered.
Then he saw her.
Anna Sergeyevna had come.
At that instant he understood something that he had been unwilling to admit.
There was no one in the world who mattered to him as much as she did.
Section Five
The Theatre
Anna entered the theatre with a young man who was almost certainly her husband.
Gurov studied him from a distance.
The man was tall, thin, and slightly stooped. His manner was excessively polite. There was something obsequious about him that made Gurov understand why Anna had once called him a flunkey.
But Gurov no longer cared about the husband.
He could see only Anna.
She sat in the third row, holding her lorgnette.
She looked almost ordinary among the provincial crowd.
Yet to Gurov she seemed more beautiful than ever.
The orchestra played badly.
People whispered and moved about.
The theatre was full of noise.
None of it mattered.
During the first interval, Anna’s husband left to smoke.
She remained alone.
Gurov approached her.
“Good evening.”
She turned.
For a moment she did not recognize him.
Then her face changed.
She became pale.
She stared at him as if she had seen someone returned from the dead.
Neither spoke.
Gurov stood before her, suddenly frightened by the intensity of the situation.
Anna gripped her fan and lorgnette.
Then she hurried toward the door.
He followed.
They wandered through the corridors and up and down the stairs without knowing where they were going. People passed them in uniforms and evening clothes.
At last Anna stopped on a narrow staircase.
“How you frightened me!” she whispered.
Her voice was trembling.
“Why have you come?”
“Anna, please understand—”
“I have thought of nothing but you.”
She looked at him with a mixture of fear and tenderness.
“I tried to forget you. I tried so hard. Why did you come?”
Gurov reached for her.
He kissed her face, her hands, her cheeks.
She pushed him away.
“What are you doing? We are mad. People will see us.”
Two schoolboys were standing nearby, watching them.
Anna lowered her voice.
“You must go.”
She was crying now.
“I will come to Moscow. I promise. I have never been happy. I am not happy now, and I never shall be happy if this continues.”
She took his hand.
“My dear one, we must part now.”
Gurov listened.
He knew she meant what she said.
But he also understood something else.
The separation they had imagined in Yalta had never really happened.
Their lives had continued to move toward each other even while they were apart.
Anna went downstairs.
Gurov remained on the landing.
He could hear her footsteps fading away.
Then there was silence.
He left the theatre.
Outside, the winter air was cold.
But for the first time he no longer doubted what he felt.
The affair had ceased to be an adventure.
It had become his life.
Section Six
A Life in Secret
After that evening Anna began coming to Moscow.
Every few months she left S——, telling her husband that she needed to consult a doctor.
Her husband believed her—or perhaps he did not entirely believe her and simply chose not to ask questions.
She stayed at the Slaviansky Bazaar hotel.
Whenever she arrived, she sent a messenger to Gurov.
Their meetings were secret.
No one in Moscow knew.
One winter morning, Gurov walked his daughter to school.
Snow was falling in large, wet flakes.
He explained to her why it could snow when the temperature near the ground was above freezing.
She asked him why thunderstorms were rare in winter.
He answered her patiently.
All the while, however, his mind was elsewhere.
He was thinking about Anna.
No one knew where he was going.
No one knew that he was about to meet the woman who had become the centre of his inner life.
And suddenly Gurov understood that he was living two separate lives.
One life was visible to everyone: his work at the bank, his marriage, his conversations with acquaintances, his dinners, his social obligations, his ordinary habits.
The other existed in secret.
It was the hidden life that mattered to him most.
Everything genuine in him belonged to that hidden world.
Everything false—the role he played, the opinions he expressed, the routines he followed—belonged to the visible one.
The realization disturbed him.
Perhaps, he thought, this was true of other people too.
Perhaps everyone carried a private existence beneath the surface, a life known to no one else.
Perhaps secrecy was not simply a weakness of human beings.
Perhaps it was part of being human.
After leaving his daughter at school, he went to the hotel.
He climbed the stairs and knocked softly.
Anna had been waiting for him.
She wore the grey dress he liked.
She looked exhausted from the journey and from the anxiety of waiting.
When she saw him, she did not smile.
She simply fell into his arms.
For a while neither could speak.
Then Anna began to cry.
Gurov sat quietly while she stood by the window, pressing a handkerchief to her face.
Their happiness was inseparable from suffering.
They could meet only in secret.
They had to lie to their spouses.
They lived in different towns.
Every reunion contained the knowledge of another separation.
“Isn’t our life shattered?” Anna asked.
Gurov had no easy answer.
He knew that their love was not disappearing.
On the contrary, Anna was becoming increasingly attached to him.
And something had changed in him as well.
One day he looked at himself in a mirror.
His hair was beginning to turn grey.
He suddenly realized how much older he had become.
Then he looked at Anna.
She was still young, still warm and alive, yet even she was not untouched by time.
He felt a deep tenderness toward her.
He also felt pity for himself.
Why did women love him?
Perhaps they had never really loved the man he was.
Perhaps they had fallen in love with an image they had created in their own minds.
He remembered all the women he had known.
He had met them, desired them, grown accustomed to them, and eventually parted from them.
But he had never truly loved any of them.
What he had called love had been attraction, vanity, habit, pleasure, or something else.
Now, when his hair was turning grey, he had finally fallen genuinely in love.
The realization frightened him.
But it also gave meaning to everything that had happened.
Section Seven
The Beginning of the Difficult Part
Gurov and Anna loved each other with the intimacy of two people who had finally discovered where they belonged.
They were lovers, but they were also close friends.
They understood one another in ways that their marriages had never allowed.
They forgave each other for the mistakes of the past.
They no longer judged one another.
Their love had changed them.
Gurov, who had once treated relationships as temporary diversions, now wanted to be sincere.
Anna, who had once been tormented by guilt, no longer regarded their feelings as something that could simply be dismissed.
Yet their happiness remained incomplete.
They were still married to other people.
They still lived in different towns.
They still had to lie.
Their meetings were hidden in hotels and quiet rooms, and every departure brought back the old pain.
Again and again they discussed the same question.
How could they escape this life of secrecy?
How could they stop pretending?
How could they live together without destroying the lives they had built around themselves?
Neither could find an answer.
They sat together for a long time, talking in low voices.
Sometimes one of them suggested a possibility, only for the other to point out another difficulty.
The problem seemed enormous.
Yet they continued searching.
They were no longer willing to return to their former lives as though nothing had happened.
Gurov understood that the most important part of his life was no longer the life visible to society.
It was this hidden relationship.
And Anna knew that she could not simply leave him behind.
They looked at one another.
There was affection in their eyes, but also exhaustion.
They had imagined that love would solve their loneliness.
Instead, love had created a new and more difficult problem.
Still, neither regretted what had happened.
They had discovered something genuine in themselves.
The solution, they felt, must exist somewhere.
Perhaps, in time, they would find a way to live without lies, without secrecy, without travelling between two worlds.
Perhaps a new life would begin.
But they both understood that such a life could not be reached easily.
There was still a long road ahead of them.
And the more they talked, the clearer it became that the most complicated and difficult part of their story had only just begun.
The End
Read the original story: americanliterature.com
Vocabulary
1. Dissatisfied — unhappy because something is not as good or satisfying as you expected.
Example: Gurov gradually became dissatisfied with his ordinary life and marriage.
2. Cynical — believing that people are mainly motivated by selfish or dishonest reasons.
Example: Gurov had become cynical about love after many unsuccessful relationships.
3. Intimacy — a close and personal relationship involving emotional or physical closeness.
Example: Their growing intimacy gradually changed the way Gurov viewed Anna.
4. Vulnerability — the quality of being emotionally exposed and easily hurt.
Example: Anna’s vulnerability made Gurov realize how deeply troubled she was.
5. Remorse — a strong feeling of guilt and regret about something you have done.
Example: Anna experienced intense remorse after becoming involved with Gurov.
6. Conventional — based on traditional ideas, customs, or accepted ways of living.
Example: Gurov began to question the conventional life he had built in Moscow.
7. Alienation — a feeling of being separated from other people or from the life around you.
Example: Gurov’s growing alienation from his ordinary life made him long for Anna.
8. Longing — a strong and persistent desire for someone or something that is absent.
Example: After leaving Yalta, Gurov felt an overwhelming longing to see Anna again.
9. Lingering — continuing to exist or remain for a long time, especially after something has ended.
Example: A lingering memory of Anna remained with Gurov throughout the winter.
10. Contemplate — to think deeply and carefully about something.
Example: Gurov began to contemplate the meaning of his life after returning to Moscow.
11. Deception — the act of deliberately hiding the truth or making someone believe something untrue.
Example: Their relationship depended on secrecy and deception.
12. Attachment — a strong emotional connection to a person or place.
Example: What began as a temporary romance developed into a deep emotional attachment.
13. Disillusioned — disappointed after discovering that someone or something is not as good as you believed.
Example: Gurov became increasingly disillusioned with the routine of his ordinary life.
14. Authentic — genuine, real, and not false or artificial.
Example: Gurov wanted to live a more authentic life instead of hiding his true feelings.
15. Profound — very deep, serious, or intense.
Example: Their separation caused Gurov a profound sense of loneliness.
16. Restrained — controlled and not openly showing strong emotions.
Example: Chekhov presents the characters’ emotions through restrained dialogue and subtle gestures.
17. Ambiguous — unclear or having more than one possible interpretation.
Example: The story ends with an ambiguous sense of uncertainty about their future.
18. Reconcile — to find a way to accept or combine two different or conflicting situations.
Example: Gurov and Anna struggle to reconcile their love with their existing marriages.
19. Emotional conflict — a struggle between different feelings, desires, or beliefs.
Example: Anna experiences intense emotional conflict between her love for Gurov and her sense of duty.
20. Uncertainty — a situation in which you do not know what will happen or what decision should be made.
Example: Despite their love, Gurov and Anna face considerable uncertainty about their future.
Comprehension Questions
- Why does Gurov initially regard Anna Sergeyevna as a temporary romantic adventure, and what does this reveal about his attitude toward relationships?
- How does Gurov’s attitude toward women reveal the contradictions between his outward confidence and his emotional dissatisfaction?
- What details in Anna Sergeyevna’s behaviour suggest that she is inexperienced, emotionally vulnerable, and uncertain about her desires?
- Why does Anna experience such intense remorse after becoming involved with Gurov, and what does her reaction reveal about her personal values?
- How does Gurov respond to Anna’s confession, and what does his reaction reveal about the difference between their emotional experiences?
- What does the early-morning scene at Oreanda reveal about Gurov’s thoughts on human life, nature, and the temporary nature of individual existence?
- Why does Gurov initially believe that his relationship with Anna will eventually become nothing more than another memory?
- How does Gurov’s return to Moscow change his attitude toward his ordinary life, and what makes his familiar routine suddenly seem empty?
- Why does the trivial conversation about the sturgeon make Gurov feel disgusted with the people and routines surrounding him?
- Why does Gurov decide to travel to S—— even though he cannot fully explain to himself what he hopes to achieve?
- Why does the grey fence outside Anna’s house attract Gurov’s attention, and how does it reflect the obstacles separating the two lovers?
- What does Gurov realize about the importance of Anna when he unexpectedly sees her at the theatre?
- Why is Anna frightened when she encounters Gurov at the theatre, and what does her reaction reveal about her continuing feelings for him?
- How does Anna’s decision to visit Gurov in Moscow demonstrate the conflict between her personal feelings and the social expectations of marriage?
- What does Gurov mean when he realizes that he has “two lives,” and why does he consider his secret life more genuine than his public one?
- How does seeing his ageing reflection in the mirror affect Gurov’s understanding of himself and his relationship with Anna?
- Why does Gurov conclude that he had never truly loved anyone before Anna, and how does this realization change his understanding of his past?
- How have Gurov and Anna changed as a result of their relationship, and why can their love no longer be regarded as a temporary affair?
- What prevents Gurov and Anna from simply beginning a new life together, despite their deep emotional attachment to one another?
- Why does the story end with the sense that the most difficult part of their situation is only beginning, and how does this unresolved ending deepen the story’s meaning?
Grammar Exercises
- If Gurov had not met Anna in Yalta, he __ his ordinary life without ever questioning it.
A) would probably have continued
B) would probably continue
C) probably continued
D) had probably continued - Having __ many relationships before, Gurov initially assumed that his feelings for Anna would eventually disappear.
A) experience
B) experienced
C) experiencing
D) been experienced - Anna spoke as though she __ unable to control what had happened between them.
A) is
B) has been
C) were
D) would be - It was only after returning to Moscow that Gurov __ how deeply Anna had affected him.
A) has realized
B) had realized
C) realized
D) was realizing - Gurov could not understand why he __ so strongly attached to someone he had originally regarded as a temporary companion.
A) had become
B) would become
C) has become
D) becomes - __ he tried to return to his normal routine, memories of Anna continued to occupy his thoughts.
A) Despite
B) Although
C) However
D) Nevertheless - Not until he saw Anna again at the theatre __ that their relationship had become essential to him.
A) he realized
B) did he realize
C) he had realized
D) had he realized - The woman __ Gurov had first noticed on the sea-front gradually became the most important person in his life.
A) which
B) whose
C) whom
D) where - Anna was afraid that Gurov __ her if he discovered how deeply she regretted their relationship.
A) would despise
B) will despise
C) has despised
D) would have despised - Gurov found himself __ about Anna even when he was surrounded by people in Moscow.
A) constantly thinking
B) constantly to think
C) constant thinking
D) having constantly think
- Had Gurov understood the depth of his feelings earlier, he __ Anna’s departure so easily.
A) would not have accepted
B) would not accept
C) did not accept
D) had not accepted - The more Gurov thought about his life in Moscow, __ dissatisfied he became with its routine and emptiness.
A) the most
B) more
C) the more
D) most - Gurov described his public existence as a life __ he was forced to hide everything that genuinely mattered to him.
A) which
B) where
C) what
D) whose - Anna admitted that she had come to Yalta because she __ a different kind of life.
A) had wanted
B) wanted
C) would want
D) has wanted - __ by the memory of Anna, Gurov eventually decided to travel to S—— in search of her.
A) Haunted
B) Haunting
C) Having haunted
D) To haunt - Gurov realized that he could no longer live __ nothing had changed after meeting Anna.
A) even though
B) as if
C) unless
D) whereas - It was Anna’s emotional sincerity __ gradually changed Gurov’s understanding of love.
A) what
B) who
C) which
D) where - By the time Anna began visiting Gurov in Moscow, their relationship __ far beyond a temporary romantic affair.
A) developed
B) has developed
C) had developed
D) would develop - However difficult their situation __, neither Gurov nor Anna was willing to return completely to their former lives.
A) may be
B) might have been
C) would have been
D) had been - They knew that, whatever solution they eventually found, the most difficult part of their relationship __ only just beginning.
A) has been
B) had been
C) was
D) were
Answer Key:
1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-C, 5-A, 6-B, 7-B, 8-C, 9-A, 10-A, 11-A, 12-C, 13-B, 14-A, 15-A, 16-B, 17-C, 18-C, 19-A, 20-C.
More C1–C2 Short Stories
01. The Open Boat (for Advanced Levels C1-C2)
The Open Boat is a powerful short story by the American writer Stephen Crane, first published in 1897. The story was inspired by Crane’s own experience of surviving a shipwreck while travelling to Cuba as a war correspondent. After the steamer Commodore sank off the coast of Florida, Crane and three other men spent many hours struggling to survive in a small open boat. This real-life experience became the foundation of one of Crane’s most memorable works.
The story follows four men — the Captain, the Correspondent, the Cook, and the Oiler — who are stranded at sea after their ship sinks. They have only a small boat between themselves and the powerful ocean. Exhausted, hungry, and uncertain whether anyone will rescue them, they take turns rowing, removing water from the boat, and watching the waves. As they approach the coast, their hope of reaching safety repeatedly rises and falls.
02. Young Goodman Brown (for Advanced Levels C1-C2)
“Young Goodman Brown” is one of the best-known short stories by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. First published in 1835, the story explores important themes such as faith, temptation, hypocrisy, sin, and the difficulty of knowing what other people are truly like. Hawthorne was especially interested in the conflict between outward appearances and hidden human weaknesses, and this story is one of his most memorable explorations of that idea.
The story follows Goodman Brown, a young man living in Salem with his wife, Faith. One evening, despite his wife’s fears, Brown leaves home and enters a dark forest for a mysterious journey. There he meets a strange traveller carrying a staff shaped like a serpent. As Brown travels deeper into the forest, he begins to discover disturbing secrets about people he has always considered respectable and religious.
03. The Garden Party (for Advanced Levels C1-C2)
The Garden-Party is a celebrated short story by Katherine Mansfield, one of the most influential short-story writers of the early twentieth century. The story was first published in 1922 and is known for its vivid descriptions, subtle social criticism, and exploration of life, death, class, and human sympathy.
Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand-born writer who became an important figure in modernist literature. Her stories often focus on ordinary moments that lead characters to unexpected emotional or psychological discoveries. Rather than relying on dramatic action, Mansfield was particularly interested in people’s thoughts, feelings, relationships, and changing perceptions.