In the following essay excerpt, Peterson examines the "obsession with language and with the power that language can bring to its possessor" in "The Darling."

On the surface "The Darling" is a comic story. Chekhov himself recognized it as such; moreover, the principles of the comic mode of expression are evident in the story's obsession with language and with the power that language can bring to its possessor. Other links to Chekhov's early comic stories include the static and theatrical beginning (reminiscent of stage directions), the circumstantial disruption (rain), allegorical names, and stereotypical characters. The heteroglossia of Chekhov's early stories is there, but it is more refined, approaching in its finesse the virtuosity of Dickens. "The Darling" is a tour de force of comic "hybrid" narration where several speech manners, several "languages" and belief systems are allowed to exist side by side. And, as in Chekhov's early...