“We’ve had the land for nearly three hundred years ...” Who is the speaker? Who is spoken to? What is referred to as ‘the land’? What do you know of ‘the land’ from their conversation?

“We’ve had the land for nearly three hundred years ...” Who is the speaker? Who is spoken to? What is referred to as ‘the land’? What do you know of ‘

“We’ve had the land for nearly three hundred years ...” Who is the speaker? Who is spoken to? What is referred to as ‘the land’? What do you know of ‘the land’ from their conversation?

Ivan Vassilevitch Lomov is a young landowner, a bachelor, aged

around 35. He is quite healthy though often complains of palpitations

and anxiety for no or petty reasons. Lomov purposefully decides to place

a marriage proposal to Natalya who is well-educated, an efficient housekeeper and quite decent looking, not because he loves her, but because he calculates the economic profit he is going to reap by this marriage. Lomov is very selfish and argumentative by nature . He gets involved in quarrels with Natalya over petty issues like the Oxen Meadows and pet dogs named Squeezer and Guess.

Lomov ill-treats Natalya and her father Chubukov in the course of the quarrel. But then he himself experiences palpitations, numbness in the leg and an eventual collapse due to excessive stress. Finally he manages to propose which is instantly accepted by Natalya. Here Lomov is a representative of decadent feudal society that possesses a very narrow frame of mind to consider love and marriage, nothing but a deal.