About the work
Comedy in five acts by Ivan Turgenev, written around 1850, published in censored form in 1855 and not staged until 1872, as a benefit performance for the actress Yekaterina Vasilyeva at the Maly Theatre in Moscow. Officials had initially barred the play from the stage, so more than two decades passed between its writing and its premiere.
Plot
On her husband's country estate, the bored lady of the house, Natalya Petrovna, secretly falls for her son's young tutor and finds herself rivalling her own ward Vera, who is drawn to the same man. Out of the quiet unrest of a long summer grows a web of unspoken feelings that leaves both women resigned and forces the tutor to leave.
Cultural significance
With its focus on unspoken feeling rather than outward action, the play is seen as anticipating the psychological drama Anton Chekhov would develop a generation later; it only became firmly established through Konstantin Stanislavski's 1909 production at the Moscow Art Theatre.