Is a Bad Storm a Good Reason to Cheat

English 2329.002

3 December 2012

Is a Bad Storm a Good Reason to Cheat?

In her short story, “The Storm”, Kate Chopin plots a situation in which two people surrender to their physical desires to finally consummate an unrequited desire. Chopin wrote fiction in the late 19th century but was much criticized for for the racy content in her work. During that era, woman were considered delicate creatures – or were expected to act so. In Chopin’s work one sees a totally different view of a woman’s behavior.

On the surface "The Storm” alludes to the sexual standards and restraints of the late nineteenth century while also making a statement about humans’ natural tendency towards sexual passion.

In Chopin’s ‘Storm’, a woman faces a natural storm that isolates her husband and son away from the home while stranding her inside with a man she once shared amorous feelings with but was unable to act on them. The natural storm outside the home lends a bridge to the metaphorical storm that rages inside where the wife, Calixta and her paramour Alcee eventually have sex. Finally, they consummated the relationship they had not been able to years earlier because of their class differences as well as the rules of impropriety that governed their time period.

I find it ironic that Chopin builds up the plot with such vivid and foreboding images that depict the dangers inherent in a storm as if one or more of her characters will fall prey to it – only to provide the milktoast ending by declaring that everyone was happy. While reading about the ensuing storm, the reader prepares themself to learn that the storm does not only destroy the characters’ belongings; it destroys the trust and faith on which their marriages were based on. But this doesn’t happen. As stated earlier, ‘everyone was happy’.

In the end of her story – probably motivated by the repressive attitudes towards women and sex at that time - Chopin advocates this kind of infidelity as the narrator tells us that...