s using her grief to punish her dead husband for being unfaithful, as if her living only for him will make him ashamed in the other world. Her grief is thus doubly a pathological condition. If she were grieving for a beloved husband, she would be wrong because she would be cutting herself off from life in a way destructive to herself, something her husband would not want. The fact that she believes she is punishing him by punishing herself is a different form of destructive act. She is undertaking both at once.
This situation is not in itself comic. It could be presented by the playwright in a serious form, and he could still bring the woman together with an outsider who would bring her out of her self-created shell and reintroduce her to the world. What makes this a comic piece is the way the material is treated, not the nature of the material itself. Chekhov first of all pushes the piece toward farce through exaggeration of the situation and of details, all revealed by the utter seriousness with which the characters take themselves and their position. This is indicated immediately in the speech of Luka, who points out that all the servants and even the cat are out having a good time while this woman is seeking to end her life by never leaving the house. A contrast is created immediately between the apparent deep mourning of Mrs. Popov and the attitude of Luka, who says he buried his wife and never gave her a second thought.
The play brings a cure into Mrs. Popov's life, however inadvertently. The man who forces his way into her home to talk business when she does not want to talk business is also the key to getting her to leave her self-imposed prison. He challenges her at first as if he were a jailer after a felon, but in the
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