Uncle Vanya the professor's daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going, suffers from her unrequited feelings for Dr. Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the professor announces his intention to sell the estate, Vanya and Sonya's home, with a view to investing the proceeds to achieve a higher income for himself and his wife. "Uncle Vanya" is unique among Chekhov's major plays because it is essentially an extensive reworking of his own play published a decade earlier, "The Wood Demon". By elucidating the specific changes Chekhov made during the revision process—these include
Uncle Vanya in the house, and Vanya speaks of dashed hopes. He feels he’s misspent his youth, and he associates his unrequited love for Yelena with the devastation of his life. Yelena refuses to listen. Alone, Vanya questions why he did not fall in love with Yelena when he first met her ten years before, when it would have been possible for the two to have married and had a happy life together. At that time, Vanya believed in Serebryakov’s greatness and was happy to think that his own efforts supported Serebryakov's work; now he has become disillusioned with the professor and