The Three Sisters, like Chekhov's plays of his later period, intertwines the mundane and the tragic. Chekhov focuses on the women's inability to be happy and their brother's staunch rejection of any promise in his life. But Chekhov is not above the use of humor to poke fun at the stubborn backwardness of his characters. The Three Sisters uses a subtle form of indirect action that, for Chekhov, mirrored real life. If reality is paced in a certain fashion, Chekhov reasoned, his plays should reflect that reality.
