29 pages • 58 minutes read
Anton ChekhovAt Home
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1897A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Pursuit of Happiness
One of the main themes of “At Home” is the pursuit of happiness. When Vera first arrives in the countryside, she thinks “happiness [is] near at hand, and perhaps [is] here already” (Part 1, Paragraph 20). The narrator notes that anyone would have envied Vera’s circumstances as wealthy, young, well-educated, and a landowner. Vera does not even think about marriage as part of her formula for happiness; rather, she dreams of being a doctor, scientist, or judge. Neither she nor the narrator specify how the freedom of the steppe connects with her professional dreams; Auntie Dasha mentions that “there are lots of engineers, doctors, and mine managers” (Part 1, Paragraph 19) nearby as a result of the factory’s construction, but Vera never plans for her future, and that is the first sign that she will not achieve her dreams.
At first, Vera thinks she will find happiness in the steppe’s expansive natural beauty. As she drives through the countryside on her way to the estate, she feels “as though she would have been glad to drive like that all her life, looking at the steppe” (Part 1, Paragraph 8). However, this is a passive happiness. In the carriage, she is a passenger enjoying the view. This positionality characterizes her as the story develops, and she becomes increasingly frustrated by her limitations but unable to act.
Walking through the garden the day after her arrival, Vera suspects for the first time that she may not find happiness. While she acknowledges that everything is beautiful and her position is enviable, the monotony of life on the estate starts to sink in. She wonders if, after all her schooling, a life wandering the estate’s grounds and listening to her asthmatic grandfather’s breathing is all that awaits her. She even has a moment of doubt when she realizes that her drive from the station filled her with expectations that will not come to fruition.
Vera’s senile grandfather, who plays cards and eats voraciously, symbolizes the ruling class that does nothing and consumes everything. This is the legacy Vera has inherited. Her frustration grows as she entertains endless guests and endures Neshtchapov’s visits. At night while reading, she thinks "What am I to do? Where am I to go?" (Part 2, Paragraph 16). The fear that she has no way out leads to the existential crisis that erupts when she chastises Alyona.
At the end of Part 2, after Auntie Dasha explains Vera’s limited prospects, Vera realizes that she is trapped on the estate, and her only way out is to marry Neshtchapov. Like Auntie Dasha, Vera decides to substitute martyrdom for happiness and to engage in token activism with the peasants, like the other women in her circle, to keep her conscience at bay.
The Peasant Problem
“At Home” takes place in late-19th-century Russia, when the country was grappling with the issue of serfdom and the rights of peasants. The Kardin estate is caught in the middle of this social flux: Auntie Dasha informs Vera that the estate is mortgaged, with interest coming due, and that one of their tenants is late on the rent. The new lords of the 19th century—financialization, capital, and banks—are threatening the family’s way of life, and Vera’s marriage to a wealthy doctor is the only thing that can save them.
Throughout the story, there are references to the tensions between the landowners and the peasants who work on their estates. When Vera first arrives at the estate, Auntie Dasha informs her about a change in her grandfather, saying, “In old days, if the servants didn't please him or anything else went wrong, he would jump up at once and shout: 'Twenty-five strokes! The birch!'” (Part 1, Paragraph 14). The image of these harsh, public beatings is contrasted by the present state of her elderly grandfather, who is now “stout, red-faced, and asthmatic” (Part 1, Paragraph 11). Auntie Dasha says that his old age, combined with a change in the attitudes of the time, have softened him. Her attitude has changed, too: “Of course, they oughtn't to be beaten, but they need looking after” (Part 1, Paragraph 14). Her paternalism characterizes the upper class’s attitude toward the peasantry: Though one can no longer beat a peasant, they still aren’t capable of looking after themselves. Vera reveals the hypocrisy of this attitude when she notes that “Auntie Dasha made money out of the pot-houses and fined the peasants” (Part 2, Paragraph 17).
Vera struggles with the answers her books provide for the peasant problem and the boots-on-the-ground reality of what a landowner like herself is actually to do about them. She thinks, “Oh, how noble, how holy, how picturesque it must be to serve the people, to alleviate their sufferings, to enlighten them!” (Part 2, Paragraph 17). However, the possibility of actually interacting with the peasants in their own social milieu disgusts Vera, revealing aspects of her intractable snobbery. When she considers going into their homes, she is disgusted by the thought of the “stuffy smell of the huts, the pot-house oaths, the unwashed children, the women’s talk of illnesses” (Part 2, Paragraph 17).
Though Vera recognizes the hypocrisy of her class and situation, and of others who seek meager reforms like opening schools or health clinics while still holding on to their vast stores of wealth, she can’t find the answer to the peasant problem, because it would mean dissolving her entire class and place in society, as well as the methods by which all landowners extract their wealth.
The Futility of Change
Vera is haunted by ideas of stasis and futility throughout “At Home.” The beginning of the story is dreamlike, with Vera half-asleep as she arrives in the countryside. The setting of “At Home” captures Russia in the middle of great social upheaval: Though serfdom has been outlawed by the mid-19th century, the peasantry are still ruthlessly exploited by landowners like Vera. When Vera asks her driver if a peasant named Boris is still alive, the driver refuses to answer her question, which Vera attributes to him being “a Little Russian” (Part 1, Paragraph 4). The term “Little Russian” is an antiquated Russian term for a Ukrainian, as Ukraine was considered “Little Russia” when it was part of the Russian Empire. Vera is unable to see that her driver despises her because it would mean having to consider whether she herself, as a landowner, is actually despicable.
Vera is described as “very young, elegant, fond of life” (Part 1, Paragraph 20). However, she seems trapped by her new circumstances. For all her education, she cannot conceive of a plan that will bring practical changes for the future. The only order she gives is to have new paths carved in the garden. This is the extent of her mindset and influence. Vera is supposed to represent the new generation of educated Russians who have the skills and resources to bring change to the country, yet it is the peasants, workers, and soldiers who, through their labor, are moving Russia forward.
Marriage to Neshtchapov is Vera’s only option to change her circumstances, but the marriage will do nothing to change society overall. Neshtchapov is quiet and cheerless, and there seems to be no prospect for Vera to change someone who barely has a personality. The narrator describes him as “expressionless, like a badly painted portrait” (Part 2, Paragraph 15), which recalls the 19th-century tradition of aristocrats having their portraits painted.
Neshtchapov’s pale skin and dark features are reminiscent of Lermontov’s protagonist Pechorin from his satirical novel A Hero of Our Time (1840). In the novel, Pechorin represents the “superfluous man” archetype, a member of the young, educated generation with all the skills and knowledge to change Russian society but lacking the will to do so. Both Vera and Neshtchapov are “superfluous people” in this sense, which is Chekhov’s pessimistic commentary that, while much change has occurred, Russia suffers from the same problems it did half a century ago.
When Vera decides to marry Neshtchapov, whom she does not love, she does so with the understanding that “[o]ne must give up one's own life and merge oneself into this luxuriant steppe, […] and then it would be well with one” (Part 3, Paragraph 32). She returns to the passivity she felt driving through the steppe at the beginning of the story: To survive her own life, Vera must give up any possibility of living it.
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