Olenka Being A Woman example essay topic

A story of Olenka, "The Darling" A Dependent Woman The story "The Darling" by Anton Chekhov, illustrates a woman that is lonely, insecure, and lacking wholeness of oneself without a man in her life. This woman, Olenka, nicknamed "Darling" is compassionate, gentle and sentimental. Olenka is portrayed for being conventional, a woman who is reliant, diligent, and idea less. Although, this story portrays that this woman, known as the Darling needs some sort of male to be emotionally dependant upon, it is as if she is a black widow, she is able to win affection, but without respect. Only able to find happiness through the refection of the beliefs of her lovers, she never evolves within the story.

This story, "The Darling" presents how a woman, named Olenka, the main character, who is also, in this story, known as the darling, has a reliance on others, and for the most lives an empty life. Olenka does not posses any personality of her own; therefore, she only finds happiness in reflecting the belief of her husbands / lovers. Olenka has the need to be fond of someone, and she frequently, fills her empty life through others, but only after having time of lacking wholeness in her self. In the beginning it appears that Olenka is waiting for Mr. Right, but it is really so, that Olenka, is dependant and needs to love and have the love of others. She finds this love, this unconditional love that most look for, in people such as her aunt, the school's French master, and even her father. Later, Olenka finds herself married to a man, by the name of, Kukin, and Kukin being her first husband.

Kukin is someone whom Olenka feels she cannot be without. Olenka sitting lonely on her back porch, night after night, and lost in thought, listened, one evening, to Kukin, the manager of an open-air theater, called the Tivoli, says, "Again!" . "It's going to rain again!" meaning there will be no work. She again on the following evening, listens to him, as he, with a laugh of hysteria, says, "Well, rain away, then!

Flood the garden, drown me! ... ". Olenka trying to become part of something and feel as if she has a purpose, would listen to Kukin with silent gravity, and sometimes there would be tears that would fill her eyes.

Kukin proposed to Olenka. Afterward marring and getting a closer view of Olenka, he throws his hands up and says, "You darling!" After seeing her neck and her plump, fine shoulders. This reader, thinks Olenka being called Darling by a man gives her, her identity. Olenka uses this name, "darling" any time she loses someone which she takes on their identity.

The two, Olenka and Kukin, get along together very well. Darling, looking after things in the theater office, giving her the feeling as if her life was full and that she found her place on earth. Olenka would say, "The theater was the chief and most important thing in life, and that it was only through the drama that one could derive true enjoyment and become cultivated by and human". , all of this wholeness Olenka felt was not from feelings she developed within herself, but instead, these feelings were gained from ideas which have been stolen because of her involvement with Kukin. Kukin having to leave to Moscow, and leaving Olenka with no one to be attached to, Olenka could not feel comfort, and she began endured feelings of emptiness.

Once again, the feeling of loneliness took over Olenka. Not being able to sleep, she would sit all night at her window, looking at the stars, comparing her self to hens who were awake all night when the cock is not in the hen-house. This being divesting to Olenka, and being only the beginning of her, again, not knowing who she is, Olenka receives a telegram. She had received telegrams in the past, but this one read, with funeral instructions, "Ivan Petrovich died suddenly today". , she sobbed, "My darling!" , and asked, why she ever met him and why she had to love him? Once again emptiness had found Olenka, and leaving her with the feeling that she is someone of nothing, and becomes lonely and desperate.

Even though she was expected to be sorrowful and heartbroken after the death of her husband, she begins looking for wholeness, and she ironically and immediately seeks and falls in love again. In order to seek happiness in her self, Olenka is able to leave her thoughts of her ex-husband and the thoughts of the Tivoli, the theater, out of her mind. Olenka falls in love again with her next lover, or shall this reader say, "her next identity", Pustovalov. Pustovalov working for a timber yard which caused Pustovalov to have to travel and leave Olenka. Olenka being a dependent as always, beings to portray her husband, again talking her husband's words, and feeling happiness whenever she was with him, it began to seem to Olenka, that she had been in the timber business for ages. Pustovalv's occupation became the most important and most necessary thing in Olenka's life, just as the theater did when she was married Kukin.

As in her previous marriages Olenka became a companion to her husband's ideas. Olenka during sleep would dream of perfect mountains of planks, and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting timber somewhere far away. With Pustovalv's being gone much of the time she finds companionship with another man to fill the void of emptiness. This man, Volditchka, and a man who is a father, has no interest in the theater and does not allow Olenka to live and speak his ideas.

Olenka needing the comfort became connected, even though, and even though, she knew Volditchka had a wife. Working in town, and needing a place to rest, Olenka tries to find fulfillment and capture the identity of another, and for her satisfaction. Olenka offered her home to Volditchka. This relationship is unlike her previous relationships with men. Voloditchka does not dote this Darling. This reader thinks Olenka feels insecure, when Volditchka says to her, ."..

Please don't put your words in". and Olenka says, "But, Voloditchka, what am I to talk about?" this feeling of loneliness would bring tears to her eyes. Embracing Voloditchka she would beg him not to be angry, and try to get him to believe they were happy. Not being able to lose the center of her life -- -- someone loving Olenka and not being with someone who needs to be loved. Olenka being a woman who has great maternal love, and which is selfless and infinite to the point of never being able to stop loving.

It is so dreadful for Olenka to be without love, and Olenka finds love again, and good times. She serves to her greater maternal love to a boy of Volditchka, known as Sasha. Voldichka's wife, being a plain and thin woman, with a hair style which is short, and a woman displaying a peevish expression arrives. With her is Voldichka's son, Sasha. Sasha calling Olenka, auntie, and thinking of his mother, he asked Olenka, "Is that your puss, auntie?"When she has a little ones, do give us a kitten. Mamma is awfully afraid of mice".

Wanting to fulfill the need of being loved and, the need to love others, she offers the boy some tea and they talked. Feeling her heart warm and feeling her bosom ache she felt has if the boy was her own. To fulfill this need and to receive the attention from others, Olenka seeks the attention and hopefully the love of Sasha. When Sasha's father left for work and his mother left to live else where Olenka found peace in herself once again, she things. When there are no more men, or will this reader say, "lovers", for Olenka to find attention from she begins to focus all of her attention on Sasha. Olenka becomes a parrot of Sasha, she follows him to school and begins taking on his ideas.

Sasha leaves and this story in the end proves to this reader that Olenka has never been able to fulfill this need she is looking for, this need to love and to be loved. Voloditchka and Sasha do come back to this place where Olenka is, but with his wife and the mother of his son, to reconcile. In Conclusion, this story portrays a woman who is insecure, lonely, and looking to love and to be loved. This love is something which Olenka searches for in males, both adults, and boys, she thinks she finds this love, in her husbands and, lover. She what she thinks to be love, in her first husband, and then her second, but the third male in her life, her lover, known as Voldichka is there only for his satisfaction. Olenka does get the fulfillment of love needed y Voldichka.

Olenka than tries through a boy named Sasha, Voldichka's son. It is true to this reader that even though Olenka experienced these relationships with these men and the boy, Sasha, she still never found a complete fulfillment in life. Olenka did not experience respect as a woman, but someone who would be there as needed. Olenka never earned respect as most women do, she to this reader only was a filler for others, others of the gender known as male.