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The Witch and Other Stories
Paperback
Publisher: Bibliotech Press
Published: Aug 29 2025
Pages: 140
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.35 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Witch, and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is a collection of short stories written by the renowned Russian playwright and author. Chekhov is best known for his keen observations of human behavior, often captured through ordinary situations and characters, yet rendered with psychological depth and subtle irony.
In The Witch (Vedma), Anton Chekhov tells a brief but haunting story set during a stormy night at a remote postal station in rural Russia. The two central characters are:
Savely Gykin - the postmaster, a suspicious and pious man.
Raissa - his young, beautiful wife, whom he treats with both desire and resentment.
As a blizzard rages outside, Savely accuses Raissa of being a witch, blaming her for everything from the storm to the troubles in his life. He's convinced her beauty and supposed immorality attract unwanted attention and even supernatural forces. His jealousy and religious fervor fuel his paranoia.
During the night, a group of stranded travelers arrives, seeking shelter. Savely, suspicious and bitter, believes Raissa is enjoying their attention and becomes even more unhinged. However, the story ends not with a dramatic confrontation but with an eerie stillness, leaving the reader unsettled.
Chekhov masterfully uses subtle dialogue, minimalism, and atmosphere to suggest more than he tells. In The Witch, he doesn't confirm whether Raissa is truly a witch or not-he instead uses the accusation to explore deeper human emotions: jealousy, loneliness, repression, and fear of the unknown.
About the Author
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860 - 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. Medicine is my lawful wife, he once said, and literature is my mistress.
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a theatre of mood and a submerged life in the text. The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience.
Chekhov began writing stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. (wikipedia.org)
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