The Role Of Adultery In Kate Chopin's The Storm

Kate Chopin is famous for stories that have characters with a lack of ethics, and her 1898 tale “The Storm is no exception. The closing statement “So the storm passed and everyone was happy.” (Chopin, 282), is a clear statement of that lack of ethics. This line is spoken after the adulterous Alcee has told his wife to stay away for longer if she would like. From an ethical standpoint, the final line in the story is false. As Adultery is unethical, there is no founding in morality for the last line of the story to be true. Three immoral actions in the story are the action of infidelity, the letter Alcee sent to his wife encouraging her to stay away longer, and the fact that Bibi and Charlotte have no knowledge of the sinful events that took place in the story. Adultery, defined as a person engaging in coitus with another person while one, or both in the case of “The Storm,” is married. This is a sin. The sinful nature of adultery is stated in the bible several times, most bluntly in Exodus: “You Must

If Calixta and Alcee truly regretted their actions during the storm, and had told their spouses of their infidelity, their marriages may have broken, or been strengthened. (Reich, Ashley). The act of the adultery is, notwithstanding the sharing of the act, a sin. Conversely, if Calixta sat Bibi down and told him of her sinful act, Bibi may have been able to forgive her, and thus their marriage would have been stronger. The same goes for Alcee and Charlotte. On the contrary, if the affair continues between Alcee and Calixta, their partners will likely discover it on their own. For the most part, this ruins marriages. The marriages would have a greater chance of surviving if the cheating spouses were honest with the oblivious spouses, and if Alcee and Calixta want each other on a perpetual basis, they should give their current spouses the respect of this knowledge. (Reich,