ANALYSIS
“The Storm” (1898)
Kate Chopin
(1850-1904)
“Sex is never comic in Kate Chopin’s writings. In ‘The Storm’ it is so elated and ‘happy,’ so full of joy
that we are reminded of the Song of Solomon, which it parallels also in its use of the lily and the
pomegranate. The story leaves aside all suspense of plot; while Clarisse in ‘At the Cadian Ball’ plays with
Alcee before she catches him, Calixta shows her no ‘guile or trickery.’ The author concentrates instead on
the delights of [sex]. There is nothing to hide in this naked pleasure, she seems to say as she discards the
bird and the idealized representation… Surpassing that ‘courage…of our perceptions’ which Henry James
had observed in the Frenchman, Mrs. Chopin turned to the matter at hand without circumlocutions.
Particularly the love-making scene is an example of her courage to treat the forbidden and of her stylistic
daring in describing it with the unreserved directness and supreme authenticity of truth.
Sex in this story is a force as strong, inevitable, and natural as the Louisiana storm which ignites it.
Given the opportunity, imperative Eros will, for better or for worse, take a hand in the shaping of our lives.
This lends a serious undertone to the tale even though it is lightly told. Kate Chopin neither ridicules nor
condemns Alcee and his two women. She is a detached observer who nowhere raises a moral finger, not
even where Alcee tries to make his wife stay away so that the affair he seems to plan can have free play.
We might even say that the author suggests that the effects of his visit are beneficial to all: Bobinot and
Bibi gain as Calixta becomes more amiable; Clarisse feels a greater sense of freedom, and the two lovers
are for the first time fully sexually awakened. But the conclusion that ‘every one was happy’ is of course
ambiguous. Mrs. Chopin may refuse to sit in judgment on morals, but she covers only one day and one
storm and does not exclude the possibility of later misery. The emphasis is on the momentary joy of the
amoral cosmic force, but the story’s all-pervasive use of primordial symbolism strengthens the undertone of
the serious, timeless aspect of Eros.
‘The Storm’ is about the tension between the male and the female, the assertive and the receptive
principles. The immobile land is threatened by the active river; the fields are exposed to rain and wind, as
they are to the lightning which strikes through the intermediary of the tall trees. There is a constant play on
the actions of opening or closing: Calixta unfastens ‘her white sacque at the throat’ as she begins to shut the
house; after riding in at the gate, Alcee tries to stay outside on the gallery, but is forced in by the storm; the
rain threatens ‘to break an entrance and deluge them’; the heroine tries to keep the water out, and she is also
afraid that the levee will give way. When we first see her, she is sewing—a popular metaphor of sexual
intercourse. In connection with Alcee we are presented with such male symbols as the horse and the plow;
another perfectly natural, yet very suggestive detail is the fact that the one piece of garment which he helps
save from the rain is the trousers of the man whose privileges he shortly usurps. As for Calixta, her mouth
is ‘a fountain of delight’ and her flesh ‘a creamy lily’ that is influenced by the sun.
The story’s diction is mostly fresh and honest; for example, Calixta is allowed to show ‘sensuous
desire.’ But occasionally we find an excessive, old-fashioned, or stale phrase, such as ‘creamy lily,’ ‘well
nigh,’ or ‘lips to be tasted.’ Alcee’s rather formal remark: ‘Let us hope, Calixta, that Bobinot’s got sense
enough to come in out of a cyclone,’ may be functional, however, as an expression of how he tries to
contain himself; and if we find a romantic ring in ‘swoon,’ we must add that D. H. Lawrence used the term,
too, in connection with the same fundamental drives which, as Mrs. Chopin expresses it here, ‘contribute...
to the undying life of the world.’
Though the story in one sense if Calixta’s (she is nearly all the time in the foreground), it seems, with its
Whitmanesque pervasive erotic atmosphere, dedicated to nature’s underlying urge rather than to any
person. All details are suggestive of this central impulse. There is complete correspondence between theme,
on the one hand, and setting, plot, and character, on the other. The elements of this piece are inextricably
