The Cherry Orchard
Anton Chekhov (1904)
“A family comes home to save their beloved estate, does absolutely nothing to save it, and loses everything while talking beautifully about the weather.”
Character Analysis
The owner of the estate and the emotional center of the play. Ranevskaya is generous, warm, self-aware, and completely incapable of practical action. She sees her own flaws clearly — she knows she wastes money, she knows her lover is worthless, she knows the orchard is doomed — and she cannot change any of it. Chekhov's compassion for her is total: he never mocks her inability to act, because he understands that the class and culture that produced her beauty also produced her helplessness. She is the old Russia at its most lovable and least viable.
Emotional, fragmented, generous with words and money. Speaks in exclamations, endearments, and sudden shifts of subject. Cannot sustain a practical sentence.