Uncle Vanya

Content Warning: This play includes depictions of alcohol abuse, sexual harassment, and attempted murder, as well as discussions of suicide and depression.

Uncle Vanya explores the pain and regret that arise when characters believe they have wasted their potential. Many of the play’s characters are keenly aware of the opportunities they have squandered and the unfulfilled promises of their pasts. In many of Anton Chekhov’s works, characters wrangle with the awareness of their own wasted potential, along with more general themes of loss and nostalgia. These preoccupations are a commentary on the social context of late 19th-century Russia; at the time, it was becoming increasingly evident that the traditional status quo was being supplanted by a new social order. For much of the population, such change elicited strong collective feelings of nostalgia for a more stable past, fear about the uncertain future, and—among the landowning nobility—regret over their class’s diminishing superiority.

The character who most embodies the pain and regret of wasted potential is Voitski, who is the titular Uncle Vanya of the play. In his monologues and laments, he expresses his regret that his own promise was thrown away in the service of his brother-in-law, leaving Voitski himself with no prospects. Although he is only 47, Voitski believes he is an old man with “no hope” for a better future. He spent his youth and middle age running the estate to support Serebrakoff’s career, and now that he is disillusioned with Serebrakoff’s abilities, he feels that his dedication was misplaced and squandered. While this is a source of tragedy in the play, it is also touched with dark comedy in the instances when Voitski’s anguish is exaggerated to farcical extremes. For instance, when he makes the unsubstantiated and exaggerated claim that he could have been “another Schopenhauer or Dostoieffski” (26), Chekhov is gently mocking Voitski’s self-aggrandizing regret. Yet, there is no doubt that Voitski’s words express his genuine pain.

Voitski’s suffering is exacerbated by the fact that Serebrakoff is now married to Helena, who is young and beautiful and whom Voitski ardently desires. Voitski is jealous because he wasted his own youth in the countryside for Serebrakoff’s sake and ended up as a lonely, middle-aged man. Meanwhile, Serebrakoff has been fortunate to find love and companionship and has lived his life to the fullest. Moreover, Voitski sees Helena as a reflection of his own wasted potential; he worries that she is wasting her youth on Serebrakoff, just as Voitski did. His despair reaches its peak in Act IV, when he is so pained by these thoughts that he wants to die by suicide.

Astroff is another character in Uncle Vanya who grapples with the pain of wasted potential. Like Voitski, Astroff feels that his decades of hard work in the countryside have left him empty and alienated. He thinks of his companions as “silly” people he is forced to spend time with. He describes both himself and Voitski as being “ruined” by their time living and working in the countryside, and he sees no hope of respite or happiness in life.

Astroff’s environmental concerns draw a parallel between the destruction of nature and the squandering of human potential. He laments that the forests and wild landscapes of Russia have been ravaged by humanity; he is concerned for the ecosystem and also believes that this destruction has come without the compensation of progress. The potential that the land holds has not been fulfilled with improved infrastructure, industry, or agriculture. It has instead been wasted, causing pain and distress to all those who value and rely on the natural world.