Did Chekhov mellow?

I've been thinking a lot lately about "In the Ravine," one of Chekhov's later stories (1900). Like all of Chekhov's writing, it is deceptively simple. Any amount of scratching below the surface leads one to discover that the layers of complexity go deep.

In other stories and plays, The Steppe (1888), "At Home" (1897), Uncle Vanya (1899), among many others, Chekhov's characters blame fate for the conditions of their lives and complain bitterly about it (Russian fatalism frustrated Chekhov immensely), but are incapable of doing anything to make themselves happier. But in "In the Ravine," no one complains. Everyone is resigned to his or her lot in life. Lipa, the central female character, even hopes that her son will grow up to do day labor with her. She actually fantasizes about her son becoming a strong man and the two of them working side by side in the fields (someone else's fields, of course). She's not only resigned to her own fate, she's resigned to her baby's fate as well. And yet, there's more to this sweet but pathetic daydream than Lipa's obvious lack of ambition for both herself and her son. If she can go back to day labor and take baby Nikifor with her, it means that they both have escaped the darkness of the Tsybukin family, the darkness (most critics call it evil) in a household where she lives much more comfortably than ever before but where she is constantly frightened.

Question: Was this a mellowing on Chekhov's part? His characters aren't complaining instead of acting, so Chekhov is not berating them for being pathetically fatalistic Russians. He doesn't criticize them, but he shows them as resigned. Which was worse to Chekhov, a whiny Russian fatalist or a resigned Russian fatalist?

To be continued...