person
Kirilov's wife
the doctor's wife
also: докторша, the doctor's wife
Doctor Kirilov's wife, thirty-five, faded and sickly; she is never named. She kneels in silent, motionless grief over the body of their only and last child, Andrey, as the story opens, and remains at his bedside while her husband is called away.
Reading notes
- Enemies §1 the doctor's wife sank to her knees
The translation renders the Russian plainly and does not add or soften detail; Chekhov's own restraint -- the boy's death is never narrated, only its immediate aftermath -- is preserved rather than dramatized further. Loc 15-17 return to the bedroom in more sustained, painterly detail; see the note there on the story's treatment of grief.