Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Storm,” focuses on Calixta and Alcee, two characters who committed adultery after being brought together by an unexpected storm. Because Chopin wrote this story in the 1890s, the lack of passion and sexual attraction in marriages is portrayed. The bad weather set the stage for both Calixta and Alcee to act on their sexual urges, which ultimately gave them a feeling of renewal in their marriages. Chopin intertwines plot and setting by describing a storm which fundamentally influenced a sexual encounter and providing insight into the eras conception that marriage is much more than a mere sexual relationship. From the first paragraph, Chopin depicts an arising storm, and informs the reader of Calixta’s domestic life.
The Storm Within the Storm In the short story “The Storm” by Kate Chopin, the two main characters, Calixta and Alcee, had chemistry several years before the adulterous affair transpires. One day during a storm the two would reunite and ignite the flame that once existed. This is the basis for the story, a storm within two marriages. Underneath the subliminal words of the story, there is a deeper meaning. “The Storm” helps define the sexual standards within the late nineteenth century while also making a dominant statement in regards to human sexual instincts and needs.
Many women characters throughout American literature reflect the same conflicts and attitudes of Nora in Ibsen's play A Doll House. The role of a woman was inferior to that of a man, especially in marriages. The main duties of a woman were centered around the home. They were expected to fulfill their domestic duties, such as caring for the children, cooking washing, and cleaning the household. She had the responsibilities of dealing with a household and she almost always had children to care for, which required strength and knowledge; however, being able too fulfill marital duties and satisfying her husband brought satisfaction to some married women.
Dorothy was a beautiful poem dedicated to the mother of Anne Bradstreet in 1650. Anne Bradstreet shared the positive characteristics of her mother with her her readers. She opened her poem with a warm description of her mother, “A loving mother and obedient wife” (Belasco p.155). Anne Bradstreet uses diction to describe her mother in line five, “whom oft she fed and clothes with her store” (Belasco p.155). Bradstreet wrote about an ideal Puritan woman, a good religious wife and mother.
The weather once again is a factor in this poem and the climatic conditions are described using the diction “sultry” and “heat”. The last sentence, “Suddenly she puts out her wing – the whole flirtatious span of it” is a personification that is used to express the symbolism of the black lace fan. Finally, this poem reflects upon the story of a loving couple and the significance of the black lace, in the woman’s life, who loses her man. The poem is expressed by the use of weather imagery, the changing of tenses from past to present, and also the use of literary features such as metaphors, simile, personification and repetition.
The Storm The purpose of this paper is to analyze The Storm by Kate Chopin. In this paper we will look at the setting, atmosphere, plot, character, foreshadowing, symbolism and theme of this story. Setting and Atmosphere This story is set on a sultry afternoon in south Louisiana near Biloxi. The body of the story takes place in Calixta's home during a fierce summer storm. The atmosphere is charged with electricity and sexual tension caused by the storm and the unexpected arrival of Alcée Laballière who Calixta had not seen very often since her marriage, and never alone.
The Storm The title of this story suggests a metaphorical connection between the storm outside and the storm of emotions going on in the individuals Calixta and Alcee. The intensity of their sexual act inside the house follows the pattern of the storm outside. Their passion climaxes and diminishes with the storm. They are left replenished and fresh just like nature. The storm outside had been brewing for some time, just as it had been brewing between Calixta and Alcee.
The Storms of Villette In Charlotte Brontë's novel, Villette, Brontë strategically uses the brutality and magnitude of thunder storms to propel her narrator, Lucy Snowe, into unchartered social territories of friendship and love. In her most devious act, the fate of Lucy and M. Paul is clouded at the end of the novel by an ominous and malicious storm. By examining Brontë's manipulation of two earlier storms which echo the scope and foreboding of this last storm -- the storm Lucy encounters during her sickness after visiting confession and the storm which detains her at Madame Walravens' abode -- the reader is provided with a way in which to understand the vague and despairing ending. A long vacation from school precedes the first storm and it is during this vacation, where Lucy is left predominately alone, that the reader feels the full depth and emptiness of Lucy's solitude. She says, "But all this was nothing; I too felt those autumn suns and saw those harvest moons, and I almost wished to be covered in with earth and turf, deep out of their influence; for I could not live in their light, nor make them comrades, nor yield them affection" (230).
What's Hidden in Kate Chopin's "The Storm"? Kate Chopin's the storm is about a woman named Calixta who rekindles a lost romance with a former lover in the midst of a storm. This story centers on lost love and being stuck in relationships that are unwanted. There is a lot of hidden meaning in the story, told well behind the characters and their surroundings, and it also has a strong plot, and a lot of symbolism. The plot of a woman and a man rekindling a lost romance in the midst of a storm is one with a lot of innuendos.
In the 1890’s the roles of women in a marriage were very different then today. Chopin wrote her stories to point out the inequality within these marriages. In “The Story of an Hour” and “The Storm,” Kate Chopin takes these conventional roles of the time and turns them up side down. “The Story of an Hour” describes the death of a husband, and his wife, Louise Mallard’s reaction to the tragedy. In “The Storm”, a wife and mother, Calixta, has an affair with an ex-boyfriend during a particularly bad rainstorm.