14. Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

The three sisters in the play were Olga, Masha and Irina. The real three sisters were Zinaida, Yelena and Natasha. They were the three daughters of a widow, Madame Lintvaryova, who owned a ramshackle estate near the Ukrainian village of Luka, where Chekhov stayed in 1888. Chekhov was delighted by the clever, unmarried women, and they in turn were charmed by the tall young Muscovite. He later mined the experience for all it was worth, using it in endless stories of imprisoned, unfulfilled women in boarded-up dachas, and culminating in the play Three Sisters (1900). The sisters’ constant longing for Moscow was sharply at odds with Chekhov’s own feelings. On a warm Ukrainian night at the Lintvaryovs’ in August 1888 he wrote: ‘The thought of Moscow with its cold climate, bad plays, snack bars and Russian ideas makes my flesh creep. I wish I could spend the winters far, far away.’

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