Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Compassionate and Melancholy, With a Touch of Gentle Comedy
We're not sure why, but Chekhov seems to have a straighter face in The Three Sisters than in The Seagull or The Cherry Orchard. The Seagull's protagonist, Konstantin, is subjected to pratfalls and humiliations that make him look a fool, even though we sympathize with him. No such crude fun is made of the Prozorov sisters. The barbs are gentler.
Take Irina—her idealism is adorable because it's just so darn innocent. Sure, when she says ridiculous things like "How wonderful it must be to get up at dawn and pave streets, or be a shepherd, or a schoolteacher who teaches children, or work on a railroad," we kind of want to puke at her naiveté (1.25). Still, even though Chekhov doesn't make her a saint, he also doesn't write scenes in which she falls down the stairs.
Chekhov was a fan of these ladies; is he going easy on the weaker sex? Did he think women couldn't be as funny? Was it inappropriate for turn-of-the-century actresses to slip on banana peels?
The protagonist sisters are subjected to some mildly mean tricks, often at the hands of their sister-in-law, Natasha. Multilingual Masha is mashed between the Skylla and Charybdis (an Odyssean monster sandwich, if you will) of Kulygin's tiresome Latin and Natasha's awful French. And Natasha gets Irina's goat at the end of the play. "Sweetie, that belt doesn't do a thing for you" (4.158), she says, almost directly quoting Olga's criticism in Act I. Ouch.
Still, we mostly feel sorry for them. Nothing turns out the way they hoped, and we like them enough to wish it would.