A Guide for Those Who Wish to Marry

«A Guide for Those Who Wish to Marry» — a satirical story in the form of humorous instructions about marriage, where the subjects of ridicule are calculation, prejudices, and the attempt to choose a spouse based on a set of external characteristics. Anton Chekhov turns the usual advice for grooms into a parody of a serious manual: behind the confident tone of the recommendations lies the absurdity of a mercantile view of relationships. The irony is built on comic exaggeration and recognizable domestic settings of the 19th century. Instead of romantic notions of family, here arise dowries, manners, appearance, and conditional rules of a «successful» marriage.

The reader receives advice on how to observe a bride, which character traits to consider suitable, and how to behave after the wedding. A special place is occupied by the dowry — the material side of marriage becomes one of the main criteria for choice. The instructions sound deliberately businesslike, but each of them exposes the coarseness and superficiality of such calculations. Chekhov mocks not individual people, but stable notions in which family life turns into a transaction and a set of convenient rules.