Abstract: Anton Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog tells a story in which a man and a woman get involved in a “dark secret love”, but this story is not a text of moral criticism. Chekhov insinuates the living conditions of modern people in masks.The protagonists are caught in self-deception. We might say that the “dark secret love” of the protagonists parodied Chekhov’s concepts of love. In this sense, The Lady with the Dog contains the inner spiritual strength of Chekhov and becomes the autobiography of author’s inner world.

Keywords: Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Dog, autobiography of the inner wold