The Storm by Kate Chopin

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The Storm by Kate Chopin

In the story "The Storm", Kate Chopin plots a situation in which two people surrender to their physical desires. Chopin wrote fiction stories in the late 19th century. She was condemned due to the immorality presented in her work. At her times, woman was considered to be very innocent, and always faithful to her husband. In Chopin's work one sees a totally different view of a woman's behavior. She is not a popular writer of her era because of her crude works; the audience of her period could not justify her stories. In the story "the storm", Kate Chopin by hiding the immoral behavior of her characters behind the fear of bad weather is being ironic.

The writer tries really hard to convince her readers that Calixta (the female character) was a victim of her fear of the bad storm. Kate uses phrases such as "exclaimed", "put her hands to her eyes, and with a cry" etc. to gather sympathy from her readers for Calixta. Right before the act of betrayal comes in the plot, the heroine is worried about her child and that instead of being one of the pathos makes her look guiltier. As Calixta remembers that she is a mother of a child still it does not stop her from having sex with Alcee. Kate describes in detail the destruction the storm causes, "The rain was coming down . . . the very boards they stood upon" presenting a frightful atmosphere, but she is not able to justify Calixta's cheating on her husband or Alcee with his wife.

Kate is being ironic in many instances during the plot of the story. For example, the four-year-old child of Calixta, Bibi is presented to be brave and not scared of the storm "Bibi laid his little hand on his father's knee and was not afraid" compared to Calixta, a grown...

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... from her marital life. "And the first free breath since her marriage seemed to restore the pleasant liberty of her maiden days. Devoted as she was to her husband, their intimate conjugal life was something which she was more than willing to forego for a while." Kate is illustrating here that people in her era were not happy in their marriages and they pursuit happiness elsewhere. In the end she uses irony again "So the storm passed and everyone was happy", but awareness that comes to a reader is that everyone was happy but they were not happy with their spouses.

In the story "the storm", Kate Chopin is actually presenting the truth. She is describing that in her era people were not faithful and the women were not as innocent as they were portrayed in the society. She does not directly give us the situations but instead she uses irony to prove her point.

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