Infidelity at its Best - Essay Example

Comprehensively, adultery is a married person’s act of sexual infidelity. Like water, adultery is a very sensitive matter that takes many forms. It can be committed even through thoughts and visual perceptions, expression through lewd languages, and the most common of its forms is having extramarital affairs. Adultery is best exemplified as either of these two contrasting forces- struggles for freedom and an appreciation of freedom.

A woman married to a philandering husband known as Phair, Katherine easily resolved to relegate herself to adultery not according to the intention of getting even with his husband’s unfaithfulness but to free herself from the revolting realities and personal fears she was encapsulated into. "To love him so deeply still, and yet I'm here,"-an excerpt from William Trevor’s “The Room”, were words uttered by Katherine as vivid evidence of her will to be free from her smoldering curiosity about the notion of deceit. Her fervor-less affair with an unnamed lover satisfied her curiosity as she finally said, “So, this is what it felt like for Phair”. Her primary aims were completed, however, she resumed her sexual ventures with her lover and made it as an alibi for her to gain entrance to her lover’s room in which she found a haven that will shield her from her dynamic fears.         

On the contrary, the entities in “The Storm” authored by Kate Chopin seemed to take adultery as an archway to cherish freedom. Monsieur Alcée Laballière and his wife Clarisse decided to set apart for some time. They esteemed freedom brought about by their provisional separation in different manners. “Devoted as she was to her husband, their intimate conjugal life was something which she was more than willing to forego for a while” This quote taken from Chopin’s text refers to freedom that served as Clarisse’s respite as she is fervently yearning to have another feel of her lighthearted moments as an unmarried woman. Alcée, on the other hand, relished his freedom with Calixta, the woman he was once so infatuated with by means of adultery. Amidst the violent storm, Calixta engaged in untailored sexual intercourse with Alcée to foster her freedom to express her mutual desire for him which she forbade herself from doing way back in her pristine age as a maiden. Her spouse, Bobinôt also took his own share of freedom. He was able to spend a short hour outside with his son Bibi and away from his nagging wife.

The depiction of adultery in Trevor’s “The Room” is the perfect complement to Chopin’s as illustrated by “The Storm”. “The Room,” tells about an adultery committed as a weapon to gain freedom. Freedom is an elusive and delicate authority. You have to persistently fight the long battle in order to win it. Just like what Katherine did, she broke free from her long-fought war against her fears of absconding from her sticky marriage and set life on her own by playing adulteress. Conversely, it need not take long years for you to take pleasure in being free. “The Storm” proved such, as Calixta, Alcée, Clarisse and even Bobinôt and Bibi only took a passing of the storm for them to enjoy the freedom they have in their hands.

Though represented in different ways, both “The Room” and “The Storm” perfectly elucidated that adultery is not merely a blunt misconduct but it also can be emblematically positive depending upon the concerned ones’ prerogatives.