A Story Of Olenka, "The Darling" A Dependent Woman

A story of Olenka, "The Darling" A Dependent Woman

The story "The Darling" by Anton Chekhov, illustrates a woman that is lonely, insecure, and lacking wholeness of oneself without a man in her life. This woman, Olenka, nicknamed "Darling" is compassionate, gentle and sentimental. Olenka is portrayed for being conventional, a woman who is reliant, diligent, and idea less. Although, this story portrays that this woman, known as the Darling needs some sort of male to be emotionally dependent

upon, it is as if she is a black widow, she is able to win affection, but without respect. Only able to find happiness through the refection of the beliefs of her lovers, she never evolves within the story.

This story, "The Darling" presents how a woman, named Olenka, the main character, who is also, in this story, known as the darling, has a reliance on others, and for the most lives an empty life. Olenka does not posses any personality of her own; therefore, she only finds happiness in reflecting the belief of her husbands/lovers. Olenka has the need to be fond of someone, and she frequently, fills her empty life through others, but only after having time of lacking wholeness in her self.

In the beginning it appears that Olenka is waiting for Mr. Right, but it is really so, that Olenka, is dependent

and needs to love and have the love of others. She finds this love, this unconditional love that most look for, in people such as her aunt, the school's French master, and even her father.

Later, Olenka finds herself married to a man, by the name of, Kukin, and Kukin being her first husband. Kukin is someone whom Olenka feels she cannot be without.

Olenka sitting lonely on her back porch, night after night, and lost in thought, listened, one evening, to Kukin, the manager of an open-air theater, called the Tivoli, says, "Again!". "It's going to rain again!" meaning there will be no work. She again on the following evening, listens to him, as he, with a laugh of hysteria, says, "Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden, drown me!....."

Olenka trying to become part of something and feel as if she has a purpose, would listen to Kukin with silent gravity, and sometimes there would be tears that would fill her eyes.

Kukin proposed to Olenka. Afterward marring and getting a closer view of Olenka, he throws his hands up and says, "You darling!" After seeing her neck and her plump, fine shoulders. This reader, thinks Olenka being called Darling by a man gives her, her identity. Olenka uses this name, "darling" any time she loses someone which she takes on their identity.

The two, Olenka and Kukin, get along together very well. Darling, looking after things in the theater office, giving her the feeling as if her life was full and that she found her place on earth. Olenka would say, "The theater was the chief and most important thing in life, and that it was only through the drama that one could derive true enjoyment and become cultivated by and human.", all of this wholeness Olenka felt was not from feelings she developed within herself, but instead, these feelings were gained from ideas which have been stolen because of her involvement with Kukin.

Kukin having to leave to Moscow, and leaving Olenka with no one to be attached to, Olenka could not feel comfort, and she began endured feelings of emptiness. Once again, the feeling of loneliness took over Olenka.

Not being able to sleep, she would sit all night at her window, looking at the stars, comparing her self to hens who were awake all night when the cock is not in the hen-house. This being divesting to Olenka, and being only the beginning of her, again, not knowing who she is, Olenka receives a telegram. She had received telegrams in the past, but this one read, with funeral instructions, "Ivan Petrovitch died suddenly today.",she sobbed, "My darling!", and asked, why she ever met him and why she had to love him? Once again emptiness had found Olenka, and leaving her with the feeling that she is someone of nothing, and becomes lonely and desperate.

Even though she was expected to be sorrowful and heartbroken after the death of her husband, she begins looking for wholeness, and she ironically and immediately seeks and falls in love again. In order to seek happiness in her self, Olenka is able to leave her thoughts of her ex-husband and the thoughts of the Tivioli, the theater, out of her mind. Olenka falls in love again with her next lover, or shall this reader say, "her next identity", Pustovalov.

Pustovalov working for a timber yard which caused Pustovalov to have to travel and leave Olenka. Olenka being a dependent as always, beings to portray her husband, again talking her husband's words, and feeling happiness whenever she was with him, it began to seem to Olenka, that she had been in the timber business for ages. Pustovalv's occupation became the most important and most necessary thing in Olenka's life, just as the theater did when she was married Kukin.

As in her previous marriages Olenka became a companion to her husband's ideas. Olenka during sleep would dream of perfect mountains of planks, and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting timber somewhere far away.

With Pustovalv's being gone much of the time she finds companionship with another man to fill the void of emptiness. This man, Volditchka, and