The schoolmistress, and other stories — A Reader’s Guide

Roads and Repetition

The road in “The Schoolmistress” is not just a setting but a structural device. Marya Vassilyevna knows “every stone, every tree” on the route; her life is a loop. This image recurs across the collection. In “On Official Duty,” the examining magistrate Lyzhin and Dr. Startchenko are delayed by a blizzard, forced to spend the night in a peasant hut. The storm “howled in the chimney and in the loft,” and the two men think longingly of the lighted streets and theatres they are missing. The road here is an obstacle, a reminder of the life they cannot have. Chekhov uses these journeys to frame his characters’ inner stasis: the physical movement only underscores how little they change.

Weather as Emotional Landscape

Weather in these stories is never mere backdrop. The April sun in “The Schoolmistress” is “lovely” but irrelevant to the protagonist. In “On Official Duty,” the blizzard is active and hostile: “Oo-oo-oo-oo!” sang the storm, and something outside slammed “viciously.” The cold, the darkness, the howling wind mirror the characters’ vexation and boredom. Chekhov often pairs a character’s mood with a precise atmospheric detail—the lingering snow in the ditches, the “fathomless sky” that Marya Vassilyevna does not see. These details are not symbolic in a heavy-handed way; they are simply what the characters notice or fail to notice, revealing their inner lives.

Confinement and the Longing for Elsewhere

Many of Chekhov’s characters are confined—by duty, by poverty, by the expectations of others. Marya Vassilyevna is trapped in her school and her road. In “On Official Duty,” Lyzhin and Startchenko are trapped in a hut, listening to the storm, thinking of the Nevsky Prospect. The constable Loshadin, old and bent, stands at the door talking, a figure of rootedness. The contrast between the restless officials and the resigned locals is sharp. Chekhov does not resolve this tension; he simply presents it. The structure of the stories often mirrors this confinement: scenes are set in cramped rooms, carts, or huts, with little movement outward. The characters’ desires for elsewhere remain unfulfilled, a recurring ache.

Shifts in Perspective and Voice

Chekhov moves between characters’ inner thoughts and external dialogue with economy. In “The Schoolmistress,” the narrative stays close to Marya Vassilyevna’s consciousness, then shifts to the driver Semyon’s casual report of a murder. This juxtaposition—her private tedium against public news—creates a quiet irony. In “On Official Duty,” the point of view moves from Startchenko to Lyzhin to the constable, each voice distinct: the doctor’s irritation, the magistrate’s student-like weariness, the constable’s naive chatter. These shifts prevent any single perspective from dominating, and they mirror the collection’s broader structure: a series of discrete stories that together form a mosaic of Russian provincial life, each with its own tone and focal point.

Chekhov’s stories reward attention to what is left unsaid—the gaps between a character’s words and their actions, the details of weather and road that seem incidental but are not. As you read, note how often a journey begins or ends a story, and what the characters carry with them: a memory, a photograph, a longing. The structure of the collection itself, with its eight stories, invites comparison. Which characters are able to change, and which are not? The answers are never spelled out, but they are there, in the snow and the silence.