Čechov, Zio Vanja, la sofferenza delle donne

Abstract

Alonge’s essay shifts the focus from the couple of loser characters (uncle Vanja and his niece), on which critics have insisted a lot, to fix on the character of twenty-seven-year-old Elena, the unhappy wife of a retired university professor, too old and therefore sexually impotent. Her “vibrant unsatisfied sexuality” (as Ripellino says) pushes her from the start to a close game of seduction towards Doctor Astrov, pre-ecological hero, defender of Nature, in whose name he solicits the full sexual liberation of the protagonist, who seems to want the doctor more than he wants her. For purely coincidental reasons, the breaking of the conjugal bond is not consummated within the temporal limits of the comedy, but is only postponed to the near future, although the critics have not noticed it, including the worthy Ripellino.

Keywords

• Female protagonism
• unsatisfied female sexuality
• female emancipation
• Nature as a metaphor for sexual liberation