“If you can’t fix it you got a stand it”: impossible love stories, identity and masculinity in “the lady with the dog” and “brokeback mountain”

Abstract

Despite their apparent dissimilarities (a nineteenth-century Russian story about an adulterous relationship and a twentieth-century story about gay men in the American West), this essay explores how their common exploration of the theme of impossible happy endings and star-crossed lovers brings Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog” and Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” together in several aspects. This essay will reveal how in both works, the idea of the individual’s identity is closely linked to masculinity and sexuality. How to be a “proper” man for Dmtri as well as for Ennis and Jack, the protagonists of these respective stories, is crucial to an understanding of who they are and will decisively mark the outcome of their relationships and lives.