Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” and “The Story of an Hour”

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Main body
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

In her short stories such as “The Storm” or “The Story of an Hour”, Kate Chopin was undoubtedly interested in presenting more to her audience than simple stories regarding simple country folk for her reader’s entertainment. Although there is little room in a short story for the full development of several individuals, significant insights regarding the multiple emotions of characters can often become very well developed by the careful use of phrases or actions. With the judicious application of only very meaningful phrases and language, the author is able to relate a specific event while providing the reader with a complex understanding of two individual characters who are trapped within the same social constraints and react quite differently.

Main body

In “The Storm”, the major part of the story is the activities of Calixta and Alcee, the main protagonist, and one of her neighbors who was caught out when the storm arrived, which are described in full detail. As it is revealed through the dialogue and the action described, Calixta once had a relationship with Alcee. This earlier relationship is predominantly shown through Alcee’s emotions and impressions.

The first accidental physical contact between the two dredges up these memories and the reasons why the two of them are not married now. “In Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his sense would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail” (Chopin, 1898). This suggests that Alcee fled before he and Calixta could consummate their love affair and satisfy old desires regardless of what her feelings were on the matter.

It is presumably for this reason that Calixta was less than fully satisfied with her marriage, always wondering if her first love would have been better. Although she is trapped in a marriage with Bobinot and now has a fine son who she is proud of, the marriage is not equal, which was illustrated at the beginning of the story when Bobinot and Bibi become stuck at the store by the storm and Bobinot nervously attempts to find something for Calixta that will appease her for the trouble he knows he’ll have caused. This indicates that the home life is less than happy although there are no overt signs of significant marital distress.

This same sense of being trapped in a less-than-passionate marriage is explored in “The Story of an Hour.” This story begins by detailing the special care that was taken in trying to inform Mrs. Louise Mallard of the death of her husband because of her weak heart. Her reaction to the news is remarked as somewhat surprising but takes on greater significance later in the story. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (Chopin, 1897: 3).

From this point, much of the physical action of the story stops as Louise retires to her room alone and sits in a chair looking out the window. Far from feeling her life was now over because her husband is dead, Louise begins to see her life as a just beginning because she will finally have a chance to make some of her own decisions. That her marriage was a relatively enforced concession to the social requirements of the time is evidenced in her thoughts as she considers the loss of her husband. “And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter?” (Chopin, 1897: 3).

As Louise recognizes the “subtle and elusive” something “creeping out of the sky” as freedom, Chopin shows her beginning to come to life in a way that has never before been recognized as a part of her spirit. “The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body” (Chopin) as she whispered the word ‘free’ over and over again.

Louise quickly accepts her new status as a widow, free to do as she pleases without any of the constraints of father, husband, or poverty to keep her from choosing her own actions in a day. “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (Chopin).

This same sense of freedom is experienced to some degree by Calixta in “The Storm” as she and Alcee finally satisfy their long-suspended passions. For each, this passion is expressed in terms of a passion never before felt and probably never to be felt again, but reveling in the experience. “Her firm elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world. The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached” (Chopin, 1898).

Comparisons can be made between the blinding white flash of the lightning outside and the blinding whiteness of Calixta in this moment of a passionate embrace. The comparison between her inner spirit and the outer environment is not to be ignored, not only as they affect her life, but also as they have bearing upon the lives of so many others. As Calixta and Alcee finish their love-making, the storm outside passes away, thundering in the distance for other people to fear and leaving Calixta’s world fresh and new.

However, both women are eventually brought back into the constraining reality of Victorian society by the end of the story. As the storm passes overhead, Calixta and Alcee are spent and begin setting everything back to rights again. Alcee writes a loving letter to his wife that she might stay on vacation for a while with the children if she wishes, reinforcing the idea that women’s movements were completely dictated by the desires of her husband while Calixta returns to her household chores as she awaits the arrival of Bobinot and Bibi.

These two are surprised by the warm welcome they receive and spend a happy and exuberant evening around the dinner table as Calixta throws herself back into her consigned role as housewife and mother. While Calixta was able to enjoy a temporary escape from the curious half-life of women of the Victorian age and then return, Louise from “The Story of an Hour” is given a different ending. Having accepted that she is free as birds, Chopin shows Louise fully coming to life through the activities of the ‘weak’ heart that is now suddenly pushing warm blood strongly through her previously constricted veins. “Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own.

She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long” (Chopin). However, the realization that her husband is still alive and healthy, thus placing her back within the confined role of the housewife, is more than her system can bear. Having tasted what it meant to be free, if only for a moment, the sight of her husband walking in the front door alive and well immediately conjured up the memory of her nearly lifeless status before the news arrived that he was dead. Louise’s physical death thus stands as a symbol of the spiritual death most women experience through their social atmosphere.

Conclusion

Through such an analysis, it can be seen how a short story with limited space for character development can still manage to present a complicated individual and an intense look at the social customs of a given time. While “The Storm” only comprises the short space of a passing storm, the implications of the storm and which storm (atmospheric or human) are the storm of the title remain concepts to be discussed in great detail, not only for the characters involved but for those reading the story, those living in the time of authorship and those experiencing it from the perspective of a century in the future.

In the same way, “The Story of an Hour” suggests a very short span of time elapsing during the duration of the story yet a great deal of character development occurs as Louise first realizes the weight of her fetters and the weightlessness of freedom with their release in the form of her widowhood and then collapses under the weight of their equally sudden return on the discovery of her continued married (conceived as a slave) state. In both stories, Chopin hammers home the unnatural and oppressed state of women in her time and urges social change for a happier society overall.

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. “The Storm.” 1898. Web.

Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” (1897). Printed in Mercury Reader. Melanie Rubens. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing.

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Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” and “The Story of an Hour”

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