The Cherry Orchard

by

Anton Chekhov

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Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky Character Analysis

In many ways the play’s main protagonist, Madame Ranevsky, is the head of her family’s estate—although she has, over the last five years, led them and the property into financial ruin. A spendthrift with a kind heart, Madame Ranevsky cannot help treating everyone around her to luxuries beyond her means—her altruism (or perhaps overcompensation) has gotten her into trouble, though, as she has wasted away her funds tending to a cruel lover in Paris, leaving her with very few options for saving her family’s ancestral home and prized cherry orchard. Rather than chop down the trees and rent out the land in parcels—the suggestion of her successful, middle-class neighbor Lopakhin—Ranevsky and her brother Gayef attempt to borrow money from wealthy relatives, but cannot delay the inevitable. As it becomes clear that she will lose her home, Ranevsky dives deep into a fantasy world; she throws an extravagant party for her family, neighbors, and servants, and hopes wildly that her daughters will marry well despite knowing deep down that she has failed, through her own frivolity, to make her daughters into appealing prospective wives. Haunted by the death of her first husband and her youngest child, a boy named Grisha, Madame Ranevsky longs to hide away in fancy and memory and shirk the duties at hand. Her denial and self-absorption ultimately lead to the loss of her home and estate; at the end of the play, Ranevsky returns to Paris, uncertain of what awaits her there but with no options left in rapidly changing Russia, where she has been fallen behind the times due to her own failure to adapt.

Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky Quotes in The Cherry Orchard

The The Cherry Orchard quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky or refer to Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Social Change Theme Icon
).
Act 1 Quotes

MADAME RANEVSKY: Cut down the cherry orchard! Excuse me, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. If there is one thing that’s interesting, remarkable in fact, in the whole province, it’s our cherry orchard.

LOPAKHIN: There’s nothing remarkable about the orchard except that it’s a very big one. It only bears once every two years, and then you don’t know what to do with the fruit. Nobody wants to buy it.

GAYEF: Our cherry orchard is mentioned in Andreyevsky’s Encyclopaedia.

[…]

FIRS: In the old days, forty or fifty years ago, they used to dry the cherries and soak ‘em and pickle ‘em, and make jam of ‘em, and the dried cherries…

GAYEF: Shut up, Firs.

FIRS: The dried cherries used to be sent in wagons to Moscow and Kharkof. A heap of money! The dried cherries were soft and juicy and sweet and sweet-smelling them. They knew some way in those days.

MADAME RANEVSKY: And why don’t they do it now?

FIRS: They’ve forgotten. Nobody remembers how to do it.

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Firs Nikolayevitch (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

GAYEF (opening the other window): The orchard is all white. You’ve not forgotten in, Lyuba? This long avenue going straight on, straight on, like a ribbon between the trees? It shines like silver on moonlight nights. Do you remember? You’ve not forgotten?

MADAME RANEVSKY (looking out into the garden): Oh, my childhood, my pure and happy childhood! I used to sleep in this nursery. I used to look out from here into the garden. Happiness awoke with me every morning! And the orchard was just the same then as it is now; nothing is altered. (Laughing with joy.) It is all white, all white! Oh, my cherry orchard! After the dark and stormy autumn and the frosts of winter you are young again and full of happiness; the angels of heaven have not abandoned you. Oh! If only I could free my neck and shoulders from the stone that weighs them down! If only I could forget my past!

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 11-12
Explanation and Analysis:

GAYEF: I’ll go [to the bank] on Tuesday and talk [the loan] over again. (To BARBARA) Don’t howl! (To ANYA) Your mamma shall have a talk with Lopakhin. Of course he won’t refuse her. And as soon as you are rested you must go to see your grandmother, the Countess, at Yaroslav. We’ll operate from three points, and the trick is done. We’ll pay the interest, I’m certain of it. (Taking sugar candy.) I swear on my honor, or whatever you will, the property shall not be sold. (Excitedly.) I swear by my hope of eternal happiness! There’s my hand on it. Call me a base, dishonorable man if I let it go to auction. I swear by my whole being.

Related Characters: Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky, Anya, Barbara
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 14-15
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2 Quotes

LOPAKHIN: Excuse me, but in all my life I never met anybody so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike! I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold, and you don’t seem to understand what I say.

MADAME RANEVSKY: Well, what are we to do? Tell us what you want us to do.

LOPAKHIN: Don’t I tell you every day? Every day I say the same thing over and over again. You must lease off the cherry orchard and the rest of the estate for villas […]

MADAME RANEVSKY: Villas and villa residents, oh, please… it’s so vulgar!

GAYEF: I quite agree with you.

LOPAKHIN: I shall either cry, or scream, or faint. I can’t stand it! You’ll be the death of me. (To GAYEF.) You’re an old woman!

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 20-21
Explanation and Analysis:

(They all sit pensively. Silence reigns, broken only by the mumbling of old FIRS. Suddenly a distant sound is heard as if from the sky, the sound of a string breaking, dying away, melancholy.)

MADAME RANEVSKY: What’s that?

LOPAKHIN: I don’t know. It’s a lifting-tub given way somewhere away in the mines. It must be a long way off.

GAYEF: Perhaps it’s some sort of bird… a heron, or something.

TROPHIMOF: Or an owl…

MADAME RANEVSKY (shuddering): There’s something uncanny about it!

FIRS: The same thing happened before the great misfortune: the own screeched and the samovar kept humming.

GAYEF: What great misfortune?

FIRS: The Liberation.

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Firs Nikolayevitch (speaker)
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3 Quotes

MADAME RANEVSKY: Oh, if only I knew whether the property’s sold or not! It seems such an impossible disaster, that I don’t know what to think… I’m bewildered… I shall burst out screaming, I shall do something idiotic. Save me, Peter; say something to me, say something…

TROPHIMOF: Whether the property is sold to-day or whether it’s not sold, surely it’s all one? […] You mustn’t deceive yourself any longer; for once you must look the truth straight in the face.

MADAME RANEVSKY: […] You settle every important question so boldly; but tell me, Peter, isn’t that because you’re young, because you have never solved any question of your own as yet by suffering? […] show me just a finger’s breadth of consideration, take pity on me. Don’t you see? I was born here, my father and mother lived here, and my grandfather; I love this house; without the cherry orchard my life has no meaning for me, and if it must be sold, then for heaven’s sake tell me too! (Embracing TROPHIMOF and kissing him on the forehead.) My little boy was drowned here. (Crying.) Be gentle with me, dear, kind Peter.

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Peter Trophimof (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:

MADAME RANEVSKY: Who bought it?

LOPAKHIN: […] I bid nine thousand more than the mortgage, and got it; and now the cherry orchard is mine! Mine! (Laughing.) Heaven’s alive! Just think of it! The cherry orchard is mine! Tell me that I’m drunk; tell me that I’m off my head; tell me that it’s all a dream! […] If only my father and my grandfather could rise from their graves and see the whole affair, how their Yermolai, their flogged and ignorant Yermolai, who used to run around barefooted in the winter, how this same Yermolai had bought a property that hasn’t its equal for beauty anywhere in the whole world! I have bought the property where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren’t even allowed into the kitchen. I’m asleep, it’s only a vision, it isn’t real… ‘Tis the fruit of imagination, wrapped in the mists of ignorance. […] Come everyone and see Yermolai Lopakhin lay his axe to the cherry orchard, come and see the trees fall down! We’ll fill the place with villas; our grandsons and great-grandsons shall see a new life here […] Here comes the new squire, the owner of the cherry orchard!

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Barbara
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

ANYA: Mamma! Are you crying, mamma? My dear, good, sweet mamma! Darling, I love you! I bless you! The cherry orchard is sold; it’s gone; it’s quite true, it’s quite true. But don’t cry, mamma, you’ve still got life before you, you’ve still got your pure and lovely soul. Come with me, darling; come away from here. We’ll plant a new garden, still lovelier than this. You will see it and understand, and happiness, deep, tranquil happiness will sink down on your soul, like the sun at eventide, and you’ll smile, mamma. Come, darling, come with me!

Related Characters: Anya (speaker), Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky, Peter Trophimof
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 4 Quotes

(MADAME RANEVSKY and GAYEF remain alone [in the nursery.] They seem to have been waiting for this, throw their arms round each other’s necks and sob restrainedly and gently, afraid of being overheard.)

GAYEF (in despair): My sister! My sister!

MADAME RANEVSKY: Oh, my dear, sweet lovely orchard! My life, my youth, my happiness, farewell! Farewell!

ANYA (calling gaily, without) Mamma!

TROPHIMOF (gay and excited): Aoo!

MADAME RANEVSKY: One last look at the walls and the windows… Our dear mother sued to walk up and down this room.

GAYEF: My sister! My sister!

ANYA (without): Aoo!

MADAME RANEVSKY: We’re coming. (Exeunt.)

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Anya (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Peter Trophimof (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
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Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky Quotes in The Cherry Orchard

The The Cherry Orchard quotes below are all either spoken by Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky or refer to Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Social Change Theme Icon
).
Act 1 Quotes

MADAME RANEVSKY: Cut down the cherry orchard! Excuse me, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. If there is one thing that’s interesting, remarkable in fact, in the whole province, it’s our cherry orchard.

LOPAKHIN: There’s nothing remarkable about the orchard except that it’s a very big one. It only bears once every two years, and then you don’t know what to do with the fruit. Nobody wants to buy it.

GAYEF: Our cherry orchard is mentioned in Andreyevsky’s Encyclopaedia.

[…]

FIRS: In the old days, forty or fifty years ago, they used to dry the cherries and soak ‘em and pickle ‘em, and make jam of ‘em, and the dried cherries…

GAYEF: Shut up, Firs.

FIRS: The dried cherries used to be sent in wagons to Moscow and Kharkof. A heap of money! The dried cherries were soft and juicy and sweet and sweet-smelling them. They knew some way in those days.

MADAME RANEVSKY: And why don’t they do it now?

FIRS: They’ve forgotten. Nobody remembers how to do it.

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Firs Nikolayevitch (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

GAYEF (opening the other window): The orchard is all white. You’ve not forgotten in, Lyuba? This long avenue going straight on, straight on, like a ribbon between the trees? It shines like silver on moonlight nights. Do you remember? You’ve not forgotten?

MADAME RANEVSKY (looking out into the garden): Oh, my childhood, my pure and happy childhood! I used to sleep in this nursery. I used to look out from here into the garden. Happiness awoke with me every morning! And the orchard was just the same then as it is now; nothing is altered. (Laughing with joy.) It is all white, all white! Oh, my cherry orchard! After the dark and stormy autumn and the frosts of winter you are young again and full of happiness; the angels of heaven have not abandoned you. Oh! If only I could free my neck and shoulders from the stone that weighs them down! If only I could forget my past!

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 11-12
Explanation and Analysis:

GAYEF: I’ll go [to the bank] on Tuesday and talk [the loan] over again. (To BARBARA) Don’t howl! (To ANYA) Your mamma shall have a talk with Lopakhin. Of course he won’t refuse her. And as soon as you are rested you must go to see your grandmother, the Countess, at Yaroslav. We’ll operate from three points, and the trick is done. We’ll pay the interest, I’m certain of it. (Taking sugar candy.) I swear on my honor, or whatever you will, the property shall not be sold. (Excitedly.) I swear by my hope of eternal happiness! There’s my hand on it. Call me a base, dishonorable man if I let it go to auction. I swear by my whole being.

Related Characters: Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky, Anya, Barbara
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 14-15
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2 Quotes

LOPAKHIN: Excuse me, but in all my life I never met anybody so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike! I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold, and you don’t seem to understand what I say.

MADAME RANEVSKY: Well, what are we to do? Tell us what you want us to do.

LOPAKHIN: Don’t I tell you every day? Every day I say the same thing over and over again. You must lease off the cherry orchard and the rest of the estate for villas […]

MADAME RANEVSKY: Villas and villa residents, oh, please… it’s so vulgar!

GAYEF: I quite agree with you.

LOPAKHIN: I shall either cry, or scream, or faint. I can’t stand it! You’ll be the death of me. (To GAYEF.) You’re an old woman!

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 20-21
Explanation and Analysis:

(They all sit pensively. Silence reigns, broken only by the mumbling of old FIRS. Suddenly a distant sound is heard as if from the sky, the sound of a string breaking, dying away, melancholy.)

MADAME RANEVSKY: What’s that?

LOPAKHIN: I don’t know. It’s a lifting-tub given way somewhere away in the mines. It must be a long way off.

GAYEF: Perhaps it’s some sort of bird… a heron, or something.

TROPHIMOF: Or an owl…

MADAME RANEVSKY (shuddering): There’s something uncanny about it!

FIRS: The same thing happened before the great misfortune: the own screeched and the samovar kept humming.

GAYEF: What great misfortune?

FIRS: The Liberation.

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Firs Nikolayevitch (speaker)
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 3 Quotes

MADAME RANEVSKY: Oh, if only I knew whether the property’s sold or not! It seems such an impossible disaster, that I don’t know what to think… I’m bewildered… I shall burst out screaming, I shall do something idiotic. Save me, Peter; say something to me, say something…

TROPHIMOF: Whether the property is sold to-day or whether it’s not sold, surely it’s all one? […] You mustn’t deceive yourself any longer; for once you must look the truth straight in the face.

MADAME RANEVSKY: […] You settle every important question so boldly; but tell me, Peter, isn’t that because you’re young, because you have never solved any question of your own as yet by suffering? […] show me just a finger’s breadth of consideration, take pity on me. Don’t you see? I was born here, my father and mother lived here, and my grandfather; I love this house; without the cherry orchard my life has no meaning for me, and if it must be sold, then for heaven’s sake tell me too! (Embracing TROPHIMOF and kissing him on the forehead.) My little boy was drowned here. (Crying.) Be gentle with me, dear, kind Peter.

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Peter Trophimof (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:

MADAME RANEVSKY: Who bought it?

LOPAKHIN: […] I bid nine thousand more than the mortgage, and got it; and now the cherry orchard is mine! Mine! (Laughing.) Heaven’s alive! Just think of it! The cherry orchard is mine! Tell me that I’m drunk; tell me that I’m off my head; tell me that it’s all a dream! […] If only my father and my grandfather could rise from their graves and see the whole affair, how their Yermolai, their flogged and ignorant Yermolai, who used to run around barefooted in the winter, how this same Yermolai had bought a property that hasn’t its equal for beauty anywhere in the whole world! I have bought the property where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren’t even allowed into the kitchen. I’m asleep, it’s only a vision, it isn’t real… ‘Tis the fruit of imagination, wrapped in the mists of ignorance. […] Come everyone and see Yermolai Lopakhin lay his axe to the cherry orchard, come and see the trees fall down! We’ll fill the place with villas; our grandsons and great-grandsons shall see a new life here […] Here comes the new squire, the owner of the cherry orchard!

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin (speaker), Barbara
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

ANYA: Mamma! Are you crying, mamma? My dear, good, sweet mamma! Darling, I love you! I bless you! The cherry orchard is sold; it’s gone; it’s quite true, it’s quite true. But don’t cry, mamma, you’ve still got life before you, you’ve still got your pure and lovely soul. Come with me, darling; come away from here. We’ll plant a new garden, still lovelier than this. You will see it and understand, and happiness, deep, tranquil happiness will sink down on your soul, like the sun at eventide, and you’ll smile, mamma. Come, darling, come with me!

Related Characters: Anya (speaker), Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky, Peter Trophimof
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 4 Quotes

(MADAME RANEVSKY and GAYEF remain alone [in the nursery.] They seem to have been waiting for this, throw their arms round each other’s necks and sob restrainedly and gently, afraid of being overheard.)

GAYEF (in despair): My sister! My sister!

MADAME RANEVSKY: Oh, my dear, sweet lovely orchard! My life, my youth, my happiness, farewell! Farewell!

ANYA (calling gaily, without) Mamma!

TROPHIMOF (gay and excited): Aoo!

MADAME RANEVSKY: One last look at the walls and the windows… Our dear mother sued to walk up and down this room.

GAYEF: My sister! My sister!

ANYA (without): Aoo!

MADAME RANEVSKY: We’re coming. (Exeunt.)

Related Characters: Madame Lyubof Andreyevna Ranevsky (speaker), Anya (speaker), Leonid Andreyitch Gayef (speaker), Peter Trophimof (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cherry Orchard
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis: