The Storm by Kate Chopin

The first thing I noticed about Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” is that it is utterly dripping with sexual imagery and symbolism. Our heroine, if you will, seems to be a woman with normally restrained passions and a well-defined sense of propriety, who finds herself in a situation that tears down her restraint and reveals the vixen within. I wonder if it was intentional that the name Calixta makes me think of Calypso – the nymph from Greek mythology. If half of the sexual symbolism I found in this story was intentional, Chopin was a genius. I was quite taken with the sexual imagery of the colors mentioned: white, and red. There is also mention a place called Assumption, while there’s nothing written on it in the bible, I believe it’s the popular opinion of those of Christian faiths, that Mary (Jesus’ mother) going to heaven was called “The Assumption.” Again, I cannot accept that as merely a happy coincidence, I believe its mention in the story was intentional. Finally, we have the storm, so central to the theme of the story that it was named for it. In this work, as well as others by Chopin, there is a recurring theme of infidelity, or women behaving in ways that society generally doesn’t accept, women behaving badly, if you will, I cannot help but wonder if Kate Chopin used her writing to express desires that she would not otherwise have expressed.

It doesn’t take hours of research to find the typical symbolism behind the most basic colors, white, and red among them. Brides wear white to symbolize purity or virtue. People give white roses as a token of the purity of the heart or the purity of their feelings. Red is associated with passion or love. Men buy the woman he loves, or wants to woe for the evening, red roses to...

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...that she was a woman trapped by her own desires in a society that could not possibly have accepted such behavior.

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. "Respectable Woman." Short Stories at East of the Web. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.

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Chopin, Kate. "The Storm." Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Boston: McGraw-

Hill, 2008. 335-38. Print.

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Boston:

McGraw-Hill, 2004. 38-39. Print.

"Kate Chopin." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.

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Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. .

Orléans, Charlotte-Elisabeth. Secret Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV: And of the Regency.

Philadelphia: G. Barrie, 1900. Print.