Where does the Ariadne thread go?
Intentio auctoris is to reveal the way Chekhov in his story Ariadne breaks the moral and aesthetic code of femininity as it was shaped in the nineteenth-century art and philosophy. Formerly the embodiment of spiritual and physical beauty, by the fin de siecle period the female ideal had been subverted by positivism and naturalism, as well as the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In Chekhovs story, where the tragedy of the man-and-woman relationship is treated in an easy-going way, it is the name of the female protagonist placated in the title that points at the mythological subtext and imagery.