Themes
The farce explores the process of getting married and could be read as a satire on the upper middle class and courtship.
The play points out the struggle to balance the economic necessities of marriage with what the characters themselves actually want. It shows the characters' desperation for marriage as comical.
In Chekhov's Russia, marriage was a means of economic stability for most people. They married to gain wealth and possessions or to satisfy social pressure. The satire is conveyed successfully by emphasizing the couple's foolish arguments over small things. The main arguments in the play revolve around The Oxen Meadows and two dogs called Flyer and Finder.
Read more about this topic: A Marriage Proposal
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shiite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)