person
Princess Vera Gavrilovna
the princess
also: Вера Гавриловна, княгиня, the princess, Princess Vera Gavrilovna
A wealthy, twice-titled aristocrat (formerly a countess, now separated from her prince) who cultivates a self-image as a gentle, angelic benefactress during her recurring retreats to the N-sky monastery; the story's free-indirect narration dwells in her self-satisfied piety before a former estate doctor confronts her with what her 'charity' has actually done to the people in her power.
Reading notes
- The Princess §4 crossed her arms upon her breast, and went up to him for his blessing
The proper form for receiving an Orthodox priest's blessing: the layperson crosses their hands, palms up, right over left, for the priest to place his hand on and then kiss. The princess performs this correctly and with visible relish, establishing from the opening pages that her piety is at least partly theater staged for an audience.
- The Princess §10 twenty-nine years
Chekhov gives the princess's exact age here, inside her own self-flattering reverie about resembling the elderly archimandrite in spirit -- the discrepancy between the age she claims kinship with (seventy) and her actual age is part of the story's quiet irony about her self-dramatization.
- The Princess §27 from a countess I've become a princess
The princess's marriage raised her rank from countess (графиня) to princess (княгиня) -- in the Russian nobility a princely title (князь/княгиня) generally outranked a count's, so this line marks a step up the aristocratic hierarchy even as the marriage itself has already collapsed.
- The Princess §76 'How happy I am!' she whispered, closing her eyes.
The story's closing line: having wept, been indicted at length, received the doctor's apology, and driven away, the princess ends exactly where she began -- absorbed in her own emotional comfort, with no sign that the doctor's tirade has touched her self-conception at all.