Conflicts in Kate Chopin's The Storm and Desiree's Baby - Essay Example

Conflicts in Kate Chopin's The Storm and Desiree's baby Kate Chopin, nee Kate O'Flaherty was a 19th century writer from New Orleans in Louisiana, USA. She is mostly renowned for her works in collections of short stories like The Story of an Hour, The Storm and Desiree’s baby. She is also credited to have written two novels, titled The Awakening and At Fault (Emory 25-35). Most of Kate’s works featured the emancipation of women and feminism, and she is regarded as the predecessor of feminism in the world, paving way for more feminists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Most of her stories are set in her homeland of Louisiana, where she was born to one of the most prominent families in the state. Though she was later acclaimed as one of the most accomplished short story and article writers, Kate never made much money out of her writing, and her two novels received wide criticisms on literary and moral standards. However, Kate’s prowess in writing short stories and narrating them was very visible in her from a very young age. Kate had great admiration for the works of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, whom she considered her role models in writing, and who also influenced many of her writings. She actually dropped out of school in order to pursue her writing and other arts such as music. One of her most celebrated short stories was The Storm, which she authored in the summer of 1898. The Storm is a story about love, marriage, the role of sex in marriage and happiness and family. The storyline is set in Louisiana in the late 19th century. The story opens with the reader being introduced to Bobinot and Bibi, who are father and son respectively (Kirszner & Mandell 142- 145). The two had gone to the stores when the skies opened up and a storm started brewing. Because of how bad the storm was, the two decide to stay in the storm and take shelter. Sitting in the store waiting the rain out, Bobinot expresses concern for his wife at home, wondering if she was worrying about them or whether she had the necessary help at home to stay calm and keep things running in the house during the storm. His son assures him that the person who helps his mother out was not at home with her hence she was alone. This is where we encounter the first conflict in the story. Calixta, Bobinot’s wife, is at home safely yet Bobinot worries about her, yet he and his son are the ones who are out in the storm and far away from home. In the second seen we are taken to Calixta’s house where she is so busy with her sewing that she does not notice the impending storm. The irony of it is that she is seated by the window but she can still not perceive the storm coming. She is finally jolted back into reality and she realizes that she had left her husband’s Sunday clothes outside to dry. She rushes out to get them before they are rained on. As she is removing clothes from the line, she sees Alcee riding his horse towards her house ((Kirszner & Mandell 142- 145).). The tension between these two is palpable, as Calixta seems to be transfixed on Alcee rather than the clothes on the line which are being rained on. It is obvious that these two characters have feelings for each other, which is so obvious to the normal eye. The irony is that by now we know that Calixta is married to Bobinot and has a son with him. We later learn that Alcee is also married, wit a family of his own as well, but whose wife has travelled. It is obvious that these two are in love but ironic that they are married to different people. Calixta invites Alcee to shelter inside the house from the storm. As the storm rages on, Calixta and Alcee are at the window watching as the storm continues. A bolt of lightning causes Calixta to fall back, right into Alcee’s arms. In a matter of seconds, a storm is brewed in the house as the two ignite their passion for each other. We learn that the two had been involved with each other in the past. Unable to hold it back, the two succumb to their passions and as the storm wanes outside, they fall into the calmness that accompanies such sessions. Ironically, both Calixta an Alcee are very happy, despite the fact that they had both betrayed their marriages. In the third scene, we go back to Bobinot and Bibi who are headed back home after the storm had ended and the sun was trying to shine. Bobinot is worried about how he and his son look muddy and dirty after passing through the fields and on muddy roads to get home. He fusses over his son thinking about how his wife, whom he considers a fussy housekeeper, would raise hell because of their dirty looks. He has, on top of everything, bought a tin of shrimps for the wife who loves them. Trying to sneak through the back door and waiting for the worst, Bobinot encounters his wife in a very jovial mood preparing their supper. Calixta hugs and kisses her family and is very pleased at her husband’s present of shrimps. This was a very pleasant surprise to him and Bibi. The family then proceeds to have a very hearty and wonderful supper at the kitchen table, laughing the night away. It is so ironic that the family’s happiness was pegged on the mother’s, whose happiness had been brought about by her having an affair, hence betraying her family. She also keeps this secret from her family, and the happiness is maintained. Alcee, on the other hand, writes a very touching letter to the wife asking her to extend her holiday longer because he was fine, despite missing them. His wife, on receiving the letter, is pleased to stay away from her husband and the rigors of marriage a while longer. Passion is reignited to both of these couples when one partner breaks their vows, which is a very conflicting scenario. The second short story full of conflict by Kate Chopin is Desiree’s Baby. Just like The Storm, the setting for this story is South Louisiana, Kate’s home town and written in the winter of 1892, just before the Civil War broke out, though it was published in 1893 (Chopin 60-63). In The Storm, we encounter Armand Aubignys, a cruel plantation owner who also owns many slaves, none of which he treats as humans. Armand is a very strict man who believes in the social order of things, in which the plantation owners are on top and the slaves at the bottom. Furthermore, he lives in a society which strongly believes in titles and he is no different. We view the story of the main characters from different viewpoints; first from Desiree’s mother Madame Valmondé's eyes, then from Desiree’s own eyes and finally the story is seen from an observer’s eye. In each of these vies, we get to encounter different emotions, views and perceptions of the main issues in the story. From Madame Valmondé, we realize that Desiree is not their birth child but one they found abandoned and decided to adopt. Therefore, her origins are not known. The moment Armand sets eyes on Desiree, he falls in love with her and courts her till they get married (Chopin 62-65). Its is a conflicting move for Armand since he strongly believes in lineages, yet he does not know of his wife’s despite being told so by Desiree’s foster father Mr. Valmondé. Depending solely on his judgment and eyes, he believes that Desiree is white, because of her fair skin, hair, and grey eyes. His arrogance in believing that he can tell a person’s race by just looking at their skin color is what brings about his miseries in life. It was also ironic that Armand’s skin was darker than Desiree, yet he saw nothing amiss in that. Desiree and Armand were models couple very in love with each other. This happiness lasted until Desiree gave birth to their son. Armand was elated to have an heir, and was blind to the fact that the baby was slightly dark skinned. However, when rumors got to him that his baby had the same shade of skin as one of his servant boys, he as forced to face the reality that his child was ‘tainted’ with black blood. He quickly concluded that it was Desiree, not him, who had black skin in her since it was unknown where she had come from, yet he was a purebred from a family with a long lineage. He instantly rejected his own son and wife because of their skin color. Desiree on the other hand loved her baby and challenged Armand to stop viewing the world in terms of color. She confronted her husband, and asked if it was his wish that she and her baby leave. For a person considered weak and a subject, Desiree exhibited boldness that was considered manly, yet her husband exhibit signs of weakness for an apparent ‘master.’ It is a conflict that Armand was ready to desert his wife and child because of the skin color despite his son having his blood. Desiree’s strength and boldness is further revealed when she left the comfort of her home to live a difficult life in the bayou, even after her mother asked her to go back to the comfort of the Valmondé’s hose. This is courageous of Desiree since most people would have gladly gone back to live in her mother’s comfortable house. Desiree, by doing this, challenged the views in society which thrived on subjugating women and portraying them as the weaker sex, unable to make their own decisions but had to be answerable to a man whether it was the father or the husband. More conflict is exhibited when Armand finds a letter written by his mother to his father confirming that Armand himself was partly black, yet he had blamed Desiree for being black and passing the black blood on to their son. For a person who despised black people ad slaves, this was a distressful revelation to Armand. Themes of feminism, social order, and race featured in many books by Kate Chopin, as she challenged the moral sense behind these societal impositions. The conflicting and ironic ways in which these themes revealed themselves to her main characters was also a Kate Chopin signature (Emory 23-33). Works Cited Chopin, Kate. Bayou folk. Houghton: Mifflin and Company, 1895. Print. Emory, Elliott. Ed. The Columbia History of the American Novel. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. Print. Kirszner, Laurie G., & Mandell Stephen R. Fiction: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Texas: Harcout Brace & Co. Print. Read More