Konstantin is in love with Nina, who, even at the beginning, seems rather less than interested in him. His own play is a rather confusing blend of symbolism and abstraction, and offers no strong challenge to his mother's theater. However, he does not seem to have clear ideas about what he wants to replace this theatrical tradition with. Konstantin rails against the theater he associates with his mother's acting - an outdated, hammy theater of gaslight and melodrama. But as the only son of Arkadina, he lives immensely in her shadow and seems terrorized by the pressure of living up both to her and his own expectations. Arkadina's son begins the play with aspirations to be a writer. The plays Arkadina appears in - repertory classics and hammy potboilers - perhaps point towards the way we are supposed to see her character: theatricalized to the extreme. She desperately wants Konstantin to feel better, yet when Sorin suggests (in Act 3) that she gives him some money, she refuses, though she undoubtedly has money to her name.

She is entirely self-obsessed, and yet worries about Konstantin after his aborted play, and particularly, after his first attempt at suicide (between Acts 2 and 3). Like many things in the play, Arkadina is extremely contradictory. Still, she is successful and a member of the highest class. Once upon a time, Arkadina may have been famous and beautiful, but she now seems more shrewish and selfish than anything else. She is having a love affair with Trigorin, the famous writer, much to the displeasure of her son Konstantin. A famous actress, extremely neurotic and self-obsessed, Arkadina is one of the principal protagonists of the play.

The seagull by anton chekhov