# Uncle Vanya — Character guide

> Key figures in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov.

- [Yelena Andreyevna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/yelena_andreyevna.md): Yelena is the professor's young wife, newly arrived at the country estate and already suffocating in it. She confesses she is bored to death and doesn't know what to do with herself, while Sonya gently urges her to help 
- [Sonya](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/sonya.md): Sonya is the professor's daughter and Vanya's niece, the one who actually keeps the estate running while others brood and complain. She reminds Yelena that she and Uncle Vanya used to go to market themselves and sell the
- [Ivan Petrovitch Voynitsky](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/ivan_voynitsky.md): Vanya manages the estate his brother-in-law the professor abandoned for scholarship, and the sacrifice has curdled into resentment. He mocks the professor's twaddle and grumbling, snaps at Sonya when she reproaches him, 
- [Mihail Lvovitch Astrov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/mihail_astrov.md): Astrov is the doctor who has served this district for over a decade, aging visibly under the strain of endless calls and epidemics. He tells Marina how spotted typhus once left him working all day without food, then a pa
- [Alexandr Valdimirovitch Serebryakov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/alexandr_serebryakov.md): Serebryakov is the retired professor whose scholarship the estate has quietly funded for years, now returned to the country and miserable in it. He wakes Yelena at midnight to complain of pain, fears he has angina, and r
- [Marya Vassilyevna Voynitsky](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/marya_voynitsky.md): Marya Vassilyevna is Vanya's mother, devoted to her son-in-law the professor and eager to discuss his latest pamphlet even as Vanya sneers at it. When she notes that the professor is attacking what he himself maintained 
- [Marina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/marina.md): Marina keeps the samovar, the knitting, and the household's small rituals running while the educated folk around her argue about wasted lives. She is the one person Astrov admits he is fond of, and her plain reply that G
- [Ilya Ilyitch Telyegin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/uncle_vanya_se/characters/ilya_telyegin.md): Telyegin belongs to the household's margins — fed, tolerated, and largely ignored by the family whose table he shares. His compulsive cheerfulness and reflexive self-deprecation mask a man who has lost his own place in t

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