The Looking Glass quiz
By Anton Chekhov
A girl who dreams of her destined husband gazes into a looking-glass on New Year's Eve and sees far more of married life than she wished for
24 questions · about 25 minutes
Questions and answers
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Question 1. Which literary categories best describe "The Looking Glass"?
- Gothic Horror, Ghost Story & Dark Romance
- Romantic Adventure, Hero Quest & Wild Nature
- Correct answer: Realism, Dream Vision & Psychological Sketch
- Folktale, Fable & Parable
- Science Fiction, Time Travel & Prophecy
Realism, Dream Vision & Psychological Sketch is the best fit. Everything Nellie sees is ordinary and true to life: a sick husband, an exhausted doctor, bad roads, a mortgage, sick children, a funeral. The story frames these scenes as a vision she has while half asleep at the glass, and it is really a portrait of one girl's mind and hopes.
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Question 2. Where is Nellie, in reality, during the whole story?
- Correct answer: Sitting in her own room, gazing into a looking-glass
- Riding in a carriage through the dark winter night
- Standing in the doctor's bedroom, begging him to come
- Kneeling at her dying husband's side, holding a candle
Nellie never leaves her room. The story says "one could hardly say whether she was asleep or awake, but nevertheless she was seeing." The carriage ride, the doctor's bedroom and her husband's death are all scenes in her vision. When something falls from her hand, she wakes at the same glass.
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Question 3. Who is Nellie when the story begins?
- The young wife of a country doctor, worried for her husband
- Correct answer: A general's daughter who dreams day and night of marriage
- A servant girl in a general's house, saving for a dowry
- A widow living alone, remembering the husband she lost
Nellie is "the daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl," who is "dreaming day and night of being married." She is not yet married. The husband, the doctor and the children all belong to the future she imagines in the glass.
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Question 4. When the face of the destined one first appears, what does he mean to Nellie?
- He is a stranger she fears, a warning of a marriage she does not want
- He is a family friend her father chose, though she feels nothing for him
- Correct answer: He is everything: the meaning of life, happiness, career and fate
- He is a hero from a novel she read, someone she knows cannot be real
The story says, "The destined one was for Nellie everything, the significance of life, personal happiness, career, fate." Without him, "Outside him, as on the grey background of the looking-glass, all was dark, empty, meaningless." Her whole idea of happiness rests on marriage, which is why the rest of the vision hits so hard.
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Question 5. Why is Nellie gazing into a looking-glass on New Year's Eve?
- She is practicing the speech she means to give at a New Year's ball
- She is checking whether she looks too pale to go out to the church service
- She is trying to recall the face of a husband who died long ago
- Correct answer: She hopes to glimpse her future husband, as in a fortune-telling custom
Nellie is "dreaming day and night of being married," and the first thing she sees in the glass is "the destined one." In Russian folk custom, young women told their fortunes during the winter holidays by setting two mirrors facing each other with candles, hoping to see a future husband. That is why she sees "a long, narrow corridor with endless rows of candles," and why two looking-glasses appear when she wakes.
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Question 6. What is the name of the district doctor in Nellie's vision?
- Correct answer: Stepan Lukitch
- Ivan Petrovitch
- Pavel Vassilitch
- Nikolai Semyonitch
The doctor is Stepan Lukitch, "the district doctor." The name Vlassov, which he mutters in his fever, belongs to someone at a meeting, and Domna is someone he tells Nellie to ask.
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Question 7. Why does Stepan Lukitch at first refuse to come?
- He is angry at being woken and demands to be paid in advance
- Correct answer: He has caught typhus himself and has a fever of nearly forty
- The Zemstvo doctor has warned him not to treat her family
- He is afraid of driving the dark winter roads alone at night
The doctor has spent three days seeing typhus patients and says, "I've caught it myself!" He shows her a clinical thermometer and says, "My temperature is nearly forty." (Forty degrees Celsius, about 104°F, is a very high fever.) He is not simply lazy: he is exhausted and genuinely ill.
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Question 8. What does "Egoism" mean in this story?
- Kindness shown freely to strangers who are in trouble or need
- A strong fear of catching an illness from other people
- Correct answer: Caring about your own comfort more than the needs of others
- A stubborn refusal to admit that you have been wrong
Egoism means selfishness: putting your own comfort and interests ahead of other people's needs. Nellie cries, "It's egoism!" when the doctor refuses. The irony is that the doctor is truly ill, while Nellie herself is ready to forget "sympathy for others" for her husband's sake.
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Question 9. What does the narrator say about the way Nellie accuses the doctor?
- She believes it is perfectly fair, since a doctor's duty comes before his health
- She regrets it at once and begs the doctor to forgive her harsh words
- She is too frightened to speak, so she lets the cook accuse him instead
- Correct answer: She knows the insult is false and undeserved, yet says it for her husband
The story says, "Nellie felt that she was uttering a false and undeserved insult, but for her husband's sake she was capable of forgetting logic, tact, sympathy for others." Her love for her husband makes her unfair to a sick man. Chekhov shows that devoted love can also be selfish.
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Question 10. What does "Entreating" mean in this story?
- Correct answer: Begging someone earnestly; pleading
- Ordering someone sharply to obey
- Scolding someone for a fault
- Bargaining hard over a price
Entreating means begging earnestly. After her threats, "Nellie fell to entreating and imploring like the very lowest beggar." Imploring means almost the same thing. A general's daughter is ready to humble herself completely for her husband.
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Question 11. In the vision, when Nellie returns from her husband's room, what does she find?
- Correct answer: The doctor lying on the sofa, as delirious as her husband
- The doctor already at her husband's bedside, examining him
- The doctor gone, having set off for his own home on foot
- The doctor asleep in the carriage, refusing to come inside
Nellie finds the doctor lying on the sofa, muttering about Domna, a meeting and Vlassov. "And to her horror Nellie saw that the doctor was as delirious as her husband." All her pleading has brought home a second sick man, so she decides, "I must go for the Zemstvo doctor."
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Question 12. What illness does Nellie's husband have in her vision?
- Cholera
- Diphtheria
- Scarlet fever
- Correct answer: Typhus
Nellie cries, "I know my husband has typhus!" The doctor has caught the same disease from his patients. Scarlet fever and diphtheria appear later in the vision, among her worries for her children.
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Question 13. What does "Undulating" mean in this story?
- Lying perfectly flat, still and silent
- Correct answer: Moving in smooth waves that rise and fall
- Shining out with a sudden, brief burst of light
- Fading slowly away into the darkness
Undulating means moving in smooth, wave-like rises and falls. "The sea was undulating, gleaming and now and then flaring crimson." The looking-glass stops being a still mirror and becomes a moving sea of mist, the sign that Nellie is drifting into her vision.
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Question 14. After the night with the doctor, what other trouble does the vision show?
- Her husband loses all his land in one night of gambling at cards
- Her father refuses to see her because she married against his will
- Correct answer: Each spring her husband struggles to pay the mortgage interest
- Her husband leaves her for another woman and moves to the city
Nellie sees "how her husband every spring was in straits for money to pay the interest for the mortgage to the bank." Neither of them can sleep for worry. Next come her children, with "the everlasting apprehension of colds, scarlet fever, diphtheria, bad marks at school, separation."
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Question 15. How far must Nellie and the doctor drive to reach her home?
- Five miles
- Eighty miles
- Correct answer: Thirty miles
- Ten miles
Once the doctor is in the carriage, "Now they had only to drive thirty miles and her husband would have a doctor's help." They arrive at five in the morning with exhausted horses.
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Question 16. As she sees her husband die in the vision, how does her married life seem to Nellie?
- A happy time that made all of her sorrow worth bearing
- A blessing she would gladly choose again a hundred times
- A punishment she had earned by thinking only of herself
- Correct answer: A stupid prelude leading up to this one terrible moment
Nellie asks, "Why is it, what is it for?" Then "all the previous life with her husband seemed to her a stupid prelude to this." The marriage she once thought would be "everything" now looks like a lead-up to loss. This is the darkest point of the vision.
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Question 17. What wakes Nellie from her vision?
- Correct answer: Something falls from her hand and knocks on the floor
- A servant knocks at her door to call her down to supper
- The candle beside the glass gutters out and leaves her in the dark
- She hears her own voice cry out the doctor's name aloud
"Something fell from Nellie's hand and knocked on the floor. She started, jumped up, and opened her eyes wide." The vision ends at its worst moment, broken by an ordinary noise.
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Question 18. When Nellie wakes, what does she notice about the looking-glasses?
- Both have cracked from top to bottom while she was asleep
- Correct answer: One lies at her feet, and the other still stands on the table
- There is only one glass, and it has been turned to the wall
- Both stand on the table, still showing the corridor of candles
The story says, "One looking-glass she saw lying at her feet. The other was standing as before on the table." The falling glass is what woke her. Two looking-glasses fit the fortune-telling custom of facing mirrors that make a long corridor of candles.
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Question 19. How does Nellie feel when she thinks, "I must have fallen asleep"?
- Disappointed that her happy dream of love has ended
- Afraid that the vision will come true before spring
- Correct answer: Relieved that the hard future she saw was only a dream
- Angry at herself for wasting the evening on nonsense
She thinks it "with a sigh of relief." She looks in the glass and sees "a pale, tear-stained face," and "There was no grey background now." Whatever she hoped for when she sat down, she is glad the vision is over.
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Question 20. What does the grey background of the looking-glass stand for?
- The grey winter sky outside Nellie's window that night
- The ghost of a woman who once owned the looking-glass
- The smoke from the candles slowly filling up the room
- Correct answer: A blank screen on which Nellie's imagined future plays out
Again and again, "Picture followed picture against the grey background." The grey mist is like an empty screen where her future is shown. It disappears when she wakes: "There was no grey background now." At first it held only the face she longed for, but it went on to show debt, illness and death.
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Question 21. What is the central theme of "The Looking Glass"?
- Correct answer: Dreams of marriage leave out the hardship, worry and loss of real life
- True love conquers every difficulty if a wife is loyal enough
- Doctors who put their own health first are the villains of society
- Wealth and high rank protect a family from all ordinary troubles
Nellie believes the destined one will be "everything." The glass shows the rest: illness, an exhausted doctor, debt, fear for her children and her husband's death. The story sets a romantic dream against ordinary life, which is full of worry and loss. Love is real in the vision, but it does not protect her from any of it.
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Question 22. Why does it matter that the doctor in the vision is sick himself?
- It proves the doctor is lying, since a doctor never catches typhus
- Correct answer: It shows even good people have limits, so Nellie's anger is not fair
- It makes the doctor the true hero, since he cures her husband at last
- It shows that the doctor once refused to help Nellie's father
Stepan Lukitch has been "away, seeing typhus patients" for three days and has caught the disease. Nellie calls him selfish anyway. Chekhov gives no simple villain: a frightened wife and a sick, worn-out doctor both have real claims, and her love makes her willing to ignore his suffering, though she knows her insult is undeserved. He never cures her husband; he ends up delirious on her sofa.
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Question 23. Which literary device shapes the story as a whole?
- Flashbacks that slowly reveal a crime from Nellie's own past
- Letters that Nellie writes to a friend about her married life
- Correct answer: A dream vision, framed by a waking scene at the start and the end
- Several narrators who each tell a different part of the night
The story opens with Nellie at the looking-glass, moves into the vision ("Picture followed picture against the grey background"), and closes with her waking at the same glass. This frame tells readers that the doctor, the drive and the funeral are a dream, not events that really happen.
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Question 24. Which of these events actually happened in the story?
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Nellie sits gazing into a looking-glass on New Year's Eve.
Happened
The story opens on New Year's Eve with Nellie "sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes into the looking-glass."
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Nellie is already married when the story begins.
Didn't happen
Nellie is a young girl "dreaming day and night of being married." Her husband exists only in the vision she sees in the glass.
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In her vision, the doctor shows Nellie a clinical thermometer to prove he is ill.
Happened
The doctor "thrust before her eyes a clinical thermometer" and tells her, "My temperature is nearly forty."
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In her vision, the doctor's cook gladly wakes him the moment Nellie arrives.
Didn't happen
The cook whispers, "His honour's asleep," and says he gave orders not to be waked. Nellie thrusts her aside and runs into the house herself.
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In her vision, Nellie helps the doctor into his coat, but he lies down again.
Happened
"After putting on his coat the doctor lay down again." Nellie has to get him up and drag him to the hall.
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In her vision, the doctor cures Nellie's husband as soon as they reach her home.
Didn't happen
When Nellie comes back from her husband's room, she finds that "the doctor was as delirious as her husband." She decides she must go for the Zemstvo doctor.
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In her vision, Nellie sees the footmarks the undertaker made in the hall.
Happened
Her husband's death appears "in every detail": "She saw the coffin, the candles, the deacon, and even the footmarks in the hall made by the undertaker."
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In her vision, Nellie dies first and her husband buries her.
Didn't happen
The vision notes that "one must bury the other," and Nellie sees her husband dying. She is the one left behind.
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When Nellie wakes, she sees a pale, tear-stained face in the glass.
Happened
"She looked into the looking-glass and saw a pale, tear-stained face. There was no grey background now."
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When Nellie wakes, she runs to tell her father about the man in the glass.
Didn't happen
The story ends with Nellie alone at the glass, thinking, "I must have fallen asleep," with a sigh of relief. She tells no one.
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