Impossible Desires Theme Analysis

I am now forty-seven. Till last year, like you, I deliberately tried to cloud my eyes with your learned talk, so as not to see real life — and I thought I was doing right. And now if you only knew! At nights I don’t sleep from vexation, from anger that I so foolishly lost the time when I could have had everything that my age now denies me!

You have here my life and my love; where am I to put them, what am I to do with them? My feelings are going to waste, like a ray of sunshine falling into a chasm, and I myself am going to waste.

His voice trembles, caresses… I can feel it in the air. But when I talked to him about a younger sister, he didn’t understand. Oh how I hate being plain! It’s dreadful! And I know I’m plain, I know it, I know it… Last Sunday when we were leaving church, I heard people talking about me, and one woman said, ‘She’s kind and generous, but it’s a pity that she’s so plain.’ Plain…

You’re bored, you can’t find a role for yourself, and boredom and inactivity are infectious. Look: Uncle Vanya does nothing and just follows you round like a shadow, I’ve left my work and come running to you to talk. I’ve got lazy, I can’t do it! Doctor Mikhail Lvovich used to visit us very seldom, once a month, it was difficult to persuade him, but now he drives over here every day, he’s left his woods and his practice. You must be a sorceress.

No, uncertainty is better… There’s still hope…

I think you are a good, sincere person but there’s also something strange in your whole being. You came here with your husband and everyone who was busily working here and creating something had to drop what they were doing and devote the whole summer to looking after your husband’s gout and you yourself. Both of you — he and you — infected all of us with your idleness… I’m joking of course, but still… it’s strange, and I’m convinced that if you had stayed, the devastation would have been enormous.

We shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live out many, many days and long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials fate sends us; we shall labour for others both now and in our old age, knowing no rest, and when our time comes, we shall meekly die, and there beyond the grave we shall say that we suffered, that we wept, that we were sorrowful, and God will have pity on us, and you and I, dear Uncle, shall see a life that is bright and beautiful and full of grace, we shall rejoice and look back on our present woes with tenderness, with a smile — and we shall rest.