Themes in Three Sisters

Romance and affairs

People within the play are married (unhappily) and have affairs with each other but are they doing it out of loneliness or love?

Masha and Vershinin

Both of these characters are unhappily married and find each others company the perfect distraction from home life. They both claim to love each other however at the end of the play they do not end up with each other. So was it actually love?
Maybe Masha does love her husband but was just bored with her life and wanted some excitement to feel alive again. Also Vershinin and Masha spoke about being together but when the time seemed to come, Vershinin pulled out and Masha ended up back with her husband.

Natasha and Protopov

Natasha never really liked Andre and was intending to marry Protopov until she meet Andre. She decided to marry Andre but always loved Protopov and carried on seeing him whilst being married. She doesn't even try to hide it from her husband, showing that she is not ashamed of her actions.

Tragedy

The three sisters, from the beginning, want to move back to Moscow but they never do.
Irina is young but thinks she needs a husband for security. Both Tuzenbakh and Solyony ask for her hand in marriage, in the end she chose Tuzenbakh who she prefers but she doesn't really want to marry either. On the day they are to go off to be wed, Solyony challenges Tuzenbakh to a duel and Tuzenbakh dies. So in the end she marries no one and has to go back to her draining job.

Andre marries Natasha who instantly starts an affair with the man she truly loves, Protopov, which is sad because Andre really loves her. On top of all that Natasha slowly starts to take control of his household and basically throws his sisters out on their arses. The sisters never actually wanted her to move in which their brother never really understood, this is pretty ironic because they were right about her being bad news.