Love can be unexpected.

Both Anton Chekov and D.H. Lawrence paint a beautiful picture about the uncontrollable feeling of love. Whether it is Dmitri and Anna, the womanizer and unhappy bride, or Jack Fergusson and Mabel, the town doctor and the daughter of a horse traitor, you cannot control whom you fall in love with or how your views will change when you fall in love.

Love can be a release in the story by Anton Chekov, as he weaves a tale of deceit and adultery in the story “The Lady with the Pet Dog.”  Both Dmitri and Anna are married to partners they do not love and long for more.  Dmitri has been married to a wife he does not love as he states in paragraph 3,”and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be with her at home.” He then goes on to talk of his many affairs that were unsatisfying to him yet he still look forward to each new experience.  As the story progresses the love Dmitri feels for Anna starts to take over his life, especially when he returned to Moscow.  In paragraph 67 while Dmitri is at home in Moscow we read, “When in the evening stillness he heard song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm howling in the chimney, suddenly everything would rise up in his memory.” Anna has become more than just a love to Dmitri but an obsession, and in the four section Dmitri even goes to the town of “S----“ to try and find the girl he is so in love with. I get the impression that Chekov is saying that love is uncontrollable and uncontainable. That once we find love we will suffer any discomfort to have that love even if it becomes painful and discomforting.

Yet love can also be a life changing event as we see in the story written by D.H.Lawrence, “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.” His story shows the reader that love is uncontrollable and can consume your thoughts even when the protagonist isn’t even looking for love. Jack is in fact doing just the opposite; he tries to hold his position as a reason he cannot be romantically involved with his patients. Yet in paragraph 104 when Jack passes Mabel in the graveyard cleaning her mother’s tombstone her very image consumes his thoughts, “There remained distinct in his consciousness, like a vision, the memory of her face, ” ,”It seem to mesmerize him.” He has never looked at her in this way before and it confuses him. This descriptive passage gives way to him saving her from drowning herself in the family pond, then her regaining consciousness to ask does he love her. While he tries at first to deny it, we read in paragraph 147, “He had never thought of loving her. He had never wanted to love her.” Yet in the end love concurs all and he gives in to his feelings of pain and joy to say in paragraph 189, “I want you, I want to marry you, we’re going to be married, quickly, quickly-.”