While Chekov is a playwright – in and of itself – the very act of a proposal is to perform a play of sorts, making “The Proposal” very much like a play of a play. Within the story of “The Proposal”, the superficial courting of two neighbors occurs with formality and a lack of mutual love – not unlike some of the marriages of today.
Caroline Kitchener expresses in an article the lack of need of “overemphasized” procedures that goes into marriage proposals which engender the principle of “symbolic gendering” – which calls for the traditional actions of gender in the lack of in present societies. This symbolic gender can be found in every action that one assumes “that is what a women/man ought to do”, as presented in even Chekov’s drama when Lomov ask for Chubukov’s consent to propose to Natalya – the asking of consent from the other party’s parents being a procedural act of symbolic gendering. Lomov’s traditional actions is alike to the present day act of “prom-posals”, both endearing the roles of female and male in a otherwise equal relationship.
I believe “The Proposal” is far-sighted in the matters of symbolic gendering in Chekov’s time and far into the future as the concepts within present in the current day. While the roles of men and women were very different in the past, the similarities between Lomov and Natalya – through their speech and actions – are so alike to the progressed modern day equality that they reinforce the absurdities of gender roles and the necessary critique of symbolic acts of gender.
