Feminine Sexuality and Passion in Kate Chopins The Storm Essay

Feminine Sexuality and Passion in Kate Chopins The Storm In Kate Chopins short study The Storm, the narrative surrounds the brief extramarital affair of two individuals, Calixta and Alce. Many critics do not externalise the story as a condemnation of infidelity, but preferably as an affirmation of human sexuality. This essay argues that The Storm may be interpreted as an affirmation of womanish sexuality and passion as easily as a condemnation of its repression by the constraints of society. If one is to attempt to interpret The Storm, it becomes necessary to examine the conditions surrounding the storys genesis. The story was written in 1898, very in short afterward Chopin had completed The Awakening, the boldest treatment so far in American literature of the sensuous, independant woman (Seyersted 1969, p164). The Storm was not published, however, until well after Chopins death, undoubtedly because of the as-yet unparalleled sensuousness of the story and its characters. In his critical biography Kate Chopin, Per Seyersted argues that The Storm is objective in its line drawing of human sexuality and that Chopin is not consciously speaking as a woman, but as an individual (p169). One must question this assertion, however it is doubtful that in writing The Storm so soon after completing her feminist novel, Chopin had the protest of The Awakening off her mind (p169). The epithet of The Storm, with its obvious connotations of sexual energy and passion, is of course critical to any interpretation of the narrative. Chopins title refers to nature, which is symbolically feminine the wedge can therefore be seen as symbolic of feminine sexuality and passion, and the image of the storm will ... ...l constraints her unreserved portrayal of feminine sexuality would have been seen as a radical affront to the society of her time. The ending is therefore purposefully ambiguous one may see the storms passage as implying a happy ending, or one may see it as imp lying that the storm will eventually return, perhaps with the intent to destroy. Kate Chopin, however, sees feminine sexuality as something that is pure, natural, and very real in its existence one cannot assume that a brief and limited awakening that passes like a storm will be enough to make one happy. List of References Used * Chopin, Kate. The Storm in Fiction 100 An Anthology of Short Stories (6th edition), by James H. Pickering. Toronto maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1992. * Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin A Critical Biography. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1969.