A Month in the Country Literary Elements

Realist play

Russian

The action takes place on the estate of a wealthy man in Russia in the 1840s.

Because this is a play, there is no narrator and no point of view, the characters expressing their thoughts and ideas directly through their dialogues.

The mode in the play is a tense one.

The protagonist is Vera and the antagonist is Natalya.

The major conflict is between Natalya Petrovna and Vera, two women who were trying to attract the attention of the same man.

The play reaches its climax when Aleksei Belyaev is first introduced in the play.

At the beginning of the play, the narrator mentions the fact that Natalya is showered with attention by another male character and how she is not making any efforts to let him know she is not interested. Her initial actions are used here to foreshadow the way in which she will try to gain Aleksei's attention.

We have an understatement when Vera claims she will no longer pursue Aleksei. This is, however, an understatement because later she does everything she can to make sure he attracts Aleksei's attention.

One of the main allusions found in the play is the idea that Islaev knew about his wife's desire to have an affair and yet did nothing to stop her. This suggests that for the main characters, fidelity was not something that they expected from their partners.

No imagery can be found.

A paradoxical idea is the way in which Natalya was not suspected by her husband and how even after her husband found the truth he did not punish his wife but rather the men who were seduced by her.

A parallel can be drawn between Natalya and the state of the artist in Russia when the play was written. Many argued the play is a political one through which the author criticized the political environment and that Natalya is used as a representative for the artist who wants freedom of expression and who wants to live in a free world where his existence is not attacked by the ruling class.

We have a personification in the line "the light bathing everyone in its glow".

The author used dramatic monologues and stage directions in the play as dramatic devices. The most common ones are the stage directions, used by the author not only to describe the setting but also the body language of the character, revealing in the process their inner feelings and conflicts.