Comparing Story Of An Hour And The Storm By Kate Chopin
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Kate Chopin, author of both, “The Story of an Hour” and “The Storm”, created texts that force the readers into question about the implications behind certain characteristics used within main characters. The question of purpose, behind the language and behaviors associated with conflict and gender arises while reading Chopin’s work. Throughout both pieces, language, behavior, gender and race characteristics work together forming a common woman stereotype. For the purpose of this paper I will be focusing on women stereotypes created from, language and behavioral characterics identified within, “The Story of an Hour” and “The Storm”. These stories provide the reader with tragedies and conflict, showing characteristics one would generally categorize…show more content… As a foundation, she is a mother and wife, home while her family is away. She’s attending to household duties which include preparing food, a stereotypical task women would perform. The erotic language Chopin uses to describe Calixta when Alce is present is a large contributing factor of evidence in this story. “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. Now well, now her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.” Passionate, defenselessness, free to be tasted, are all places that characterize Calixta as a character. By sexualizing her in this manner we see her vulnerability as a woman. “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.” One of the underlying consistencies from these passages that characterize her as a woman character are the comparisons to the color white. “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…show more content… Proposing the argument, that Chopin’s female characters are built on her language within the text, that correlates to creating characters behaviors can be proven sufficient, but adding race into the justification strengthens the argument. Freedom is an evident trait in both short stories within different context, as well as a strong woman presence. Nisetich’s states, “The similarities in legal status between women of any race and African Americans of either sex in southern society would necessarily make Chopin’s overt critique of patriarchal authority an implicit critique of white racial power as well. However, as the original title of the novel, A Solitary Self, suggests, Chopin sought to avoid this correlation. She wanted to focus exclusively on Edna Pontellier and to explore the limits of the freedom of women—which to her meant white women—in American society.” Focusing most importantly on the last line, “to explore the limits of the freedom of women—which to her meant white women—in American society” is crucial to this argument. Each piece of evidence pulled from the short stories directly relates with Chopin exploring the limits of freedom women had during the 19th century. Although Nisetich here, is discussing alternative work