Analyze a short story Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Analyze a short story - Essay Example Lovers of a time, the two enthusiasts are coincidently united on a stormy day and in the absence of either’s family. The isolation gives way to long hidden desires and paves the way of exploration for the two. Through this paper we will explore the depth of characters, reflecting on the subject of sexuality and the way sexuality affects one’s life, and will relate sexuality to the theme of the story. Kate Chopin reveals the main character – that of Calixta – as nervous, weak and family-oriented. She is represented as a devoted wife staying home and doing the usual chores a woman is supposed to do. Unaware of the impeding storm she is sewing by the window - ‘She sat at a side window sewing furiously on a sewing machine’ – which we can conclude with the idea that she makes her effort to keep her home in a good state. We can also deduce that the woman was sexually constrained, since she was doing all the house chores an oppressed woman is stereotyped with; ‘She hastened out to gather them (the clothes) before the rain fell’. Chopin further affixes the idea of sexuality which had not been explored to a considerable extent in contemporary times. Women were taken to be as beings with no sexual desires and mere fulfillers of their partner’s yearnings. ... Despite all odds, Calixta made love out of the isolation she was pushed into and out of the love she possessed for a man, in the backdrop of the furious storm; ‘He looked down into her eyes and there was nothing for him to do but gather her lips in a kiss’. Chopin highlights the not-to-talk-of issue of female sexuality and very cleverly unties its knots from that of erotica. What may seem as an illicit lovemaking between two sensual creatures, actually veils the underlying meaning and feelings behind the act. At a time when her family was out in the furious storm, Calixta had taken refuge from the worry in the arms of an old-time lover. The concern had been such great that she went down with the flow of the presiding situation, disheveling her heart through her hidden desires. This clearly moves the reader to believe that women have desires too – and that was what actually Chopin had tried to convey. The sentence that ‘Calixta nervously began to gather up fr om the floor the lengths of a cotton sheet’ asserts that the air was tense and that Calixta’s nervousness had something to do with Alcee’s presence. Earlier everything was just ‘fine’ but after Alcee’s presence it became nervous. This, we may assume as Calixta’s effort to suppress feelings for Alcee, making her nervous. The character of Alcee is a representation of a decent man with natural desires. He had been forced to move inside the house of Calixta which he had not really desired, while the rain fell in sheets. ‘May I come over and wait on your gallery till the storm is over, Calixta?’ he had asked. The circumstances led the way for his desires resurfacing and what followed eventually was an array of mixed feelings. He had not only loved