The Cherry Orchard

The end of the 19th century was a time of great social change in Russia. For centuries, the country was divided between the land-owning class and the peasantry; people called serfs were enslaved to a parcel of land and were forced to labor there. There was no opportunity for social mobility, and an individual lived out their life in the position they were born into. In the mid-19th century, however, the country emancipated the serfs. This led to a decline in the aristocracy’s concentrated wealth and an increase in individual freedom, including the opportunity for social mobility. The Cherry Orchard was written at the start of the 20th century, and it explores the effect of these sweeping social changes on the characters’ lives. While some characters appreciate the power of this new social mobility and use it to improve their wealth and independence, other characters are confused and destabilized by it.

Throughout the play, many characters struggle to find their new place in this changing world. Fiers, who clings to his identity as a servant to stave off the changes of Emancipation Reform, complains that “now everything’s all anyhow and you can’t understand anything” (42). He cannot understand where he fits in this new world. Although the days of serfdom were full of oppression and suffering, identity and social class were uncomplicated and easy to understand as everyone remained in the class they were born into, and carried on in the same class as their ancestors. The rules that governed class behavior, too, were carefully defined, and no one broke those rules, with servants and serfs always deferring to the landowners and serving them obediently. However, after emancipation, these rules no longer exist and the lines that separate the classes have become murky, which Fiers finds very uncomfortable. Most of the servants on the estate, for example, are rarely seen working. Dunyasha dresses and does her hair “like a lady” (4), and so does Charlotta, wearing white and a tightly laced corset; to Varya’s irritation, the clerk Epikhodov behaves like “a visitor” during Act III’s party.

These social changes have had an adverse effect on aristocrats and the landed gentry, throwing most of them into poverty. In an example of this, Lubov and Gaev are bankrupt, since their estate is too expensive for them to maintain without the serfs’ labor. They share this problem with other formerly rich landowners, like Simeonov-Pischin, who runs around throughout the play asking everyone he meets to lend him money so he can pay off the interest on his property. Lubov, on the other hand, refuses to acknowledge the extent of these changes and continues to act as if she is still wealthy. 

Lopakhin is the symbol of Russia’s changing economy and social structure. His father was a peasant and a poor shopkeeper, but he has become a wealthy merchant. He ends up buying Lubov’s estate, which was the land where his ancestors were enslaved as serfs. Despite his delight at his upward trajectory, Lopakhin remains unsettled by these changes. He feels he is “still a peasant down to the marrow of [his] bones” and does not believe he embodies the qualities of the upper class since he remains uneducated (4). The forward-thinking revolutionary Trofimov suggests that they must let go of the past and strict ideas of social identity to embrace the future; he tells Lopakhin, “Your father was a peasant, mine was a chemist, and that means absolutely nothing” (75). In the new Russia, each has the possibility to create their own identity, regardless of their family’s history.