How we cite our quotes: (Act.Line)
Quote #1
Masha: When Father was alive we used to have thirty or forty officers at our birthday parties—it was noisy and fun. Today there's only a man and a half and it's dull as a desert. I'm leaving. (1.43)
Without sufficient opportunities to socialize, the sisters are bored and miserable. Small towns can be tough on city girls. What does half a man look like in Russia, we wonder?
Quote #2
Chebutykin: My dears, my little girls, you are all I have, you are dearer to me than anything else in the world. (1.64)
Chebutykin is just a family friend, but he has become a part of the family. It could sound a little creepy, but he's really just a father figure for the ladies.
Quote #3
Vershinin: Life here must be very good. But it's funny, the nearest railroad station is eighteen miles away. And nobody seems to know why. (1.97)
A nice detail: the inaccessibility of transportation makes escape more difficult for the sisters, and fun less likely to come a-calling.
Quote #4
Vershinin: All right, let's agree that this town is backward and vulgar, and let's suppose now that out of all its thousands of inhabitants there are only three people like you. Of course you won't be able to overcome the unenlightened mass that surrounds you… (1.143)
Vershinin is a real big-picture thinker. He doesn't get upset about the backwardness of the town because he's focusing on 200 years from then. And here, he throws a bit of shade at the sisters for taking on a holier-than-thou attitude all the time.
Quote #5
Kulygin: This little book contains the names of all those who have graduated from our high school over the last fifty years. (1.150)
Ugh. So boring! Kulygin's gift to Irina indicates how isolated and provincial this town is. It's like someone giving you the phone book for Back Swamp, North Carolina and saying you're welcome.
Quote #6
Ferapont: I dunno… Can't hear too well.
Andrey: If you could hear, I wouldn't be telling you all this. I have to talk to someone. My wife doesn't understand me; I'm afraid of my sisters, I don't know why. (2.22)
Andrey doesn't just complain about being marooned in a podunk town. His isolation is all emotional and since he feels that he has no one to turn to, he tells his troubles to the deaf servant.
Quote #7
Andrey: In Moscow you can sit in a restaurant full of people, and nobody knows you and you don't know anybody, but still you don't feel like a stranger. In this town you know everybody and everybody knows you, but you're always a stranger…A stranger, and alone. (2.24)
That's pretty dismal. And it gets worse: when Natasha enters the picture, Andrey even becomes a stranger to his sisters, heightening his sensation of isolation.
Quote #8
Chebutykin: No matter how you rationalize it, my boy, loneliness is an awful business. (2.181)
The old bachelor complains of his loneliness, but we can't see him wanting it any other way. He's the one who's the most resigned to the way things are, even if it's not always fun to be lonely.
Quote #9
Irina: [Andrey's] finally become a member of the County Council. He's a member, and Protopopov is the chairman… The whole town is talking and laughing, and he's the only one who doesn't know anything, doesn't see anything. Tonight everybody went to see the fire, but not him. He just sits in his room and pays no attention to anything; he just plays his violin. (3.97)
Detached from everyone around him, Andrey seems clinically depressed. Plus, he's ignorant about (or at least ignoring) his wife's affair with Protopopov, his superior and the chairman of the County Council. It's pretty embarrassing, and definitely enough to be depressed about.