person
Anna Spiridonova
also: Анна Спиридонова
A young peasant woman who comes to the doctor's walk-in reception and, after glancing anxiously at the doors, whispers that she has no children -- a confidence of infertility offered amid the ordinary traffic of an overworked rural clinic.
Reading notes
- An Unpleasantness §53 No children!
A young peasant woman's whispered confidence of infertility, offered furtively for fear of being overheard through the surgery's thin partitions. Chekhov presents the moment without comment, as one more piece of the ordinary, unglamorous suffering that passes through a rural clinic in a single morning; the translation keeps the line's plainness and does not elaborate or soften it.