Born April 2, 1873, on the estate of Oneg in the province of Novgorod, Russia, Sergei Vassilyvitch Rachmaninoff was the fifth of the six children of Vassili and Lyoubov Boutakova Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff's aristocratic descent was traced to the Hospodars Dragosh, rulers of the realm of Molday from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. One of the daughters from this family had married a son of the Grand Duke Ivan III of Moscow. The son's nephew was named Rachmanin, and from this source the family name originated.1 Rachmaninoff's mother was the daughter of a general, head of Araktcheyev Military College in Novgorod and the owner of a number of estates in the district. It was with a dowry of five of these estates that Lyoubov Boutakova married Vassili Rachmaninoff, and on one of these estates, Oneg, the couple settled down to married life.

This paper will examine Chekhov's attitudes toward love and marriage as revealed in his short stories. An attempt will be made to find certain themes which recur frequently and to discover the reasons for their recurrence.