What are Oxen Meadows? What is the measure of the land? What is the controversy? | Describe the episode where Lomov and Chubukov engage themselves in an argument regarding the past incidents of each others’ families.

What are Oxen Meadows? What is the measure of the land? What is the controversy?

Oxen Meadows are the meadows that are wedged in between birchwoods and the Burnt Marsh.

The land is of five dessiatins or 13.5 acres. The controversy is whether the Lomovs or the Chubukovs or the peasants own the Oxen Meadows. Regarding this, an argument starts between Lomov and Natalya. According to Lomov, the land was once the subject of dispute. His aunt’s grandmother gave the free use of the land to the peasants of Natalya’s father’s grandfather and so they had used it for forty years. But Natalya disagrees, saying that their land extends to Burnt Marsh and includes the Oxen Meadows too and it has been this way since 300 years.

Describe the episode where Lomov and Chubukov engage themselves in an argument regarding the past incidents of each others’ families.

In Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Proposal’, Ivan Vassilevitch Lomov comes to propose to Chubukov 25-year-old daughter Natalya for marriage. However, he forgets his intention and allows himself to be side-tracked into an argument over property ownership. Both Natalya and her father join the argument. They yell at each other and call names. In this episode, there is an exchange of grotesque and ludicrous dialogues which give rise to loud laughter. According to Lomov, “The Lomovs have all been honourable people…” where as Chubukov grandfather tried ’embezzlement and his mother was ‘hump-backed’. On the other hand, Chubukov remarks that Lomovs had ‘lunacy in their family, his grandfather was a ‘drunkard’, his younger aunt; Nastasya ran away with an architect and Lomov’s father was a ‘guzzling gambler’. These farcical dialogues give rise to boisterous laughter.