Chap­ter IX begins at a moment of qui­et dev­as­ta­tion, as the house­hold feasts care­less­ly after young Nikifor’s funer­al. The mourn­ers par­take in food and chat­ter as though the grief in the room is no more than back­ground noise. Lipa, whose sor­row is raw and con­sum­ing, final­ly breaks down, only to be dis­missed by Aksinya with cold indif­fer­ence. Her pain is not wel­come. The house, once shared in name, now feels entire­ly alien. Lipa makes her deci­sion to leave for Torgue­vo, return­ing to her moth­er with noth­ing but the mem­o­ry of her child and the sting of rejec­tion from a home that no longer belongs to her.

The sto­ry then piv­ots to a depic­tion of the pass­ing years and the shift in author­i­ty with­in the Tsy­bukin estate. Aksinya, who once stood as a sup­port­ing fig­ure, has now become the dom­i­nant force in both the house­hold and the local econ­o­my. Her alliance with the Hrymin Juniors and the open­ing of a tav­ern by the sta­tion mark not just a busi­ness move, but a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of her role in soci­ety. Her con­fi­dence, once sub­dued under the weight of grief and oblig­a­tion, now flour­ish­es in com­merce and influ­ence. Even landown­ers who once might have dis­missed her now engage with admi­ra­tion, show­ing how pow­er reshapes per­cep­tion. The tav­ern stands as both a sym­bol of suc­cess and of change—a piv­ot from the tra­di­tion­al val­ues once held in the Tsy­bukin fam­i­ly.

In con­trast to Aksinya’s rise, old man Tsy­bukin fades into a kind of liv­ing obscu­ri­ty. He no longer com­mands respect or atten­tion; instead, he is seen wan­der­ing, aim­less and ignored, his for­mer sta­tus reduced to an echo. The vil­lage mur­murs qui­et­ly of his mis­treat­ment, their gos­sip sug­gest­ing more than just a shift in power—it implies a decline in dig­ni­ty. Sit­ting beside the church gate, he becomes a ghost­ly fig­ure, a cau­tion­ary tale of how quick­ly rev­er­ence turns to pity. Mean­while, Var­vara remains odd­ly untouched by the upheaval. She con­tin­ues her char­i­ta­ble work, her focus seem­ing­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the moral ero­sion in her own house­hold. Her good­ness, though admirable, feels mis­placed or too dis­tant to affect the decay with­in her fam­i­ly.

Anisim’s absence hangs heav­i­ly over the house­hold, unre­solved and qui­et­ly damn­ing. A des­per­ate let­ter is received, pos­si­bly from him, but its con­tents only deep­en the ambi­gu­i­ty sur­round­ing his fate. His sto­ry­line rep­re­sents all that has been lost or left behind in the pur­suit of wealth and con­trol. The con­trast between Lipa’s qui­et with­draw­al, Tsybukin’s fall, and Aksinya’s rise under­lines the emo­tion­al cost of ambi­tion. It asks whether pow­er gained in the absence of com­pas­sion is tru­ly progress, or mere­ly anoth­er form of loss. The peo­ple in the vil­lage, wit­ness­ing the changes, speak not just about the trans­for­ma­tion in wealth, but about the shift­ing val­ues that now define the Tsy­bukin name.

Beneath the sur­face of growth and enter­prise, the fam­i­ly is fractured—emotionally, moral­ly, and spir­i­tu­al­ly. Lipa, who once held the hope of famil­ial belong­ing, now lives apart from the only struc­ture she knew as home. Tsy­bukin, once firm and direc­tive, now has no voice in his own affairs. Aksinya stands at the cen­ter, suc­cess­ful but feared, respect­ed yet ques­tioned. In many ways, the sto­ry reflects the broad­er ten­sion in chang­ing rur­al Russia—a strug­gle between the old guard and the emerg­ing order, between pow­er found­ed on tra­di­tion and pow­er gained through enter­prise. The vil­lagers’ con­ver­sa­tions near the end make it clear: not every­one sees the trans­for­ma­tion as progress. In their eyes, some­thing essen­tial has been lost.

The chap­ter, in its lay­ered nar­ra­tive, illus­trates the cost of evo­lu­tion with­in fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. While Aksinya com­mands and expands, the emo­tion­al wreck­age left behind goes unno­ticed or is con­sid­ered nec­es­sary col­lat­er­al. Chekhov crafts this trans­for­ma­tion not as tri­umph, but as a med­i­ta­tion on what is sur­ren­dered when ambi­tion is unchecked. The human bonds—those of love, mem­o­ry, and dignity—are often the first to unrav­el. What remains is a shell of pros­per­i­ty, inhab­it­ed by shad­ows of the peo­ple who once dreamed under that roof.