Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky

The play's title character, forty-seven-year-old son of Marya Vasilyevna Voinitskaya and brother of the late Vera Petrovna (Serebryakov's first wife). For twenty-five years he has managed the family estate -- inherited by his sister and now belonging to his niece Sonya -- to fund the academic career of his brother-in-law Professor Serebryakov, whom he once revered. The professor and his young second wife Yelena Andreyevna's extended visit to the estate strips away Voinitsky's illusions: he comes to see Serebryakov as a mediocrity who has produced nothing of lasting worth, recognizes his own life as wasted in service to that illusion, and is simultaneously consumed by a hopeless, unconsummated love for Yelena. His rage erupts in Act Three when Serebryakov proposes selling the estate out from under Sonya; Voinitsky fires a revolver at him twice and misses both times. In Act Four, in despair, he takes a vial of morphine from Astrov's medicine case, apparently intending self-harm, and surrenders it after Sonya's pleading. The play ends with him settling back into the estate's account-books beside Sonya.