Yelena Andreyevna

Serebryakov's second wife, twenty-seven years old, married him for what she calls an artificial love drawn to his scholarly fame rather than to the man himself. Beautiful, idle, and self-described as bored and unhappy, she becomes the object of Voinitsky's helpless infatuation and, in the play's near-affair thread, of a mutual attraction with the country doctor Astrov -- culminating in a kiss Voinitsky witnesses in Act Three, after which she insists on leaving the estate immediately. She and Sonya reconcile in Act Two after a period of coldness, and in Act Three Yelena questions Astrov on Sonya's behalf about his feelings for her, only to become entangled with him herself. She departs the estate with Serebryakov at the end of the play, the near-affair with Astrov unconsummated and deliberately left behind.