Critical Analysis of Kate Chopin’s Short Stories: A Night in Acadie and The Storm

Narrative Plot and Erotic Impulses in A Night in Acadie. Kate Chopin’s short story "A Night in Acadie" (1897) follows Telèsphore, a young man with a roving eye who is nonetheless ready to settle down. To distract himself from the various attractive women who live near him, he decides to go on a trip; on the train, he meets a beautiful young woman named Zaïda, who is traveling to a ball. Intrigued, Telèsphore decides to attend the party, where he spends much time dancing with Zaïda. Later that night, he accompanies her as she heads off to a secret rendezvous with a disreputable but handsome man named André, whom she intends to marry, much to Telèsphore’s disgust. When a drunken André treats Zaïda with disrespect, Telèsphore attacks him; the two men fight, Telèsphore wins, and he and Zaïda seem happy and close as the story ends.

Local Color Realism and Editorial Constraints. This story is typical of Chopin in its emphasis on Louisiana local color, in its depiction of distinct ethnic groups (in this case, especially Cajuns and blacks), in its focus on passionate characters (including a self-assertive woman), and in its stress on the power of erotic impulse. As in many of her tales, Chopin’s tone here is not only objective but also subtly amused and slightly ironic; she obviously enjoys her characters, and when she smiles at them she smiles with affection rather than disdain or superiority. Although she zeroes in on two (or, at most, three) main characters, she nonetheless manages to create a vivid sense of an entire society, whose customs seem both exotic and familiar. Male—and female—competitiveness is strongly featured, and the final battle is nearly Darwinian. If in the final scenes Zaïda seems a more compliant figure than during most of the rest of the story, this is because male editors insisted that Chopin tone down the finale to make the heroine more conventionally and passively "feminine". As so often in Chopin’s writings, however, the final paragraphs are open ended, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about the characters’ ultimate fates. Chopin’s job is done: She has given us a quick but convincing slice of life that takes us inside the vital minds and emotions and the lively society of people rarely presented in fiction before.

Academic Discussion Prompts for A Night in Acadie. The following analytical questions facilitate critical inquiry regarding the text's social, stylistic, and structural dimensions:

1. What does this story imply about human affection? In particular, what does it suggest about the nature of love?

2. To what degree, and in what ways, does the story both challenge and reinforce stereotypes about ethnic groups, about racial groups, and about relations between the sexes?

3. Compare and contrast the use of humor in this story and in "At the 'Cadian Ball." Choose some specific instances or phrases and try to explain what, exactly, makes them comic and how the comedy enhances the overall effectiveness of the two works.

4. Compare and contrast the endings of this story and "The Storm." In particular, discuss how and why the ending of this tale would have been acceptable to Chopin’s editors and first readers in ways not true of the conclusion of "The Storm."

5. Compare and contrast this story with the work of a New England "local color" writer, such as Sarah Orne Jewett. In particular, discuss the ways relations between the sexes are presented in this tale and in Jewett’s story "A White Heron."

Narrative Plot and Sensual Transgression in The Storm. In Kate Chopin’s "The Storm" (1898), when a violent storm suddenly approaches, Bobinôt and his young son Bibi must wait it out in a country store, where they worry about Calixta, Bobinôt’s wife, who is home alone, waiting for their return. Meanwhile, just before the storm hits, Calixta sees Alcée Laballière (who had once courted her) approach her house, where he asks for shelter. As the storm lashes the house, Calixta and Alcée feel drawn to each other and have passionate, satisfying sex before Alcée departs. When Bobinôt and Bibi return, they are happy, Calixta is happy, and Alcée is so happy that he writes a letter to his wife, Clarisse, who has been away; he urges her to take her time returning, and, so, Clarisse is happy as well.

Publication Controversy and Critical Interpretations. Partly (no doubt) because of this story’s graphic sexuality and its failure to condemn explicitly the adultery it describes, Chopin never tried to publish it; surely this tale, if it had ever been released, would have created even more controversy than The Awakening. The story is a heavily ironic sequel to "At the 'Cadian Ball," and in that sense it illustrates Chopin’s tendency to create characters who recur from one tale to another. As did William Faulkner, Chopin crafted a distinct fictional world in which many of the same settings, people, and events are often described first in one work and then in another. In the present case, through a subtitle, she explicitly invites us to read "The Storm" in relation to the earlier work, and the connections between the two tales imply that life is even more complicated than the first story had already implied. Some critics have argued that Chopin, in the second tale, offers a nonjudgmental approach to pleasurable (even adulterous) sex, implying that it (like the storm itself) is a powerful natural force that is disruptive but perhaps also beneficial, even if the final sentence of the story may be partly ironic (Seyersted 166–167). At least one critic (Lawrence Berkove), however, argues that here as in some of her other works, Chopin’s irony is far more corrosive than it seems at first and that Chopin does not endorse the immoral conduct of characters driven by loveless lust and selfish motives. The fact that the story lends itself to such debate is due to the complexity and skill with which it is written, and the final sentence typifies the ways Chopin can communicate complicated and even conflicting tones in language that seems transparently simple.

Academic Discussion Prompts for The Storm. The following prompts guide critical examination of the story's themes, symbolism, and literary techniques:

1. In your view, what is Chopin’s attitude toward the behavior of Calixta and Alcée? Support your argument with evidence from the text, and pay special attention to any pieces of evidence that might lend support to contrasting claims.

2. Discuss the use of implication and connotation in this story; how does Chopin manage to suggest more than she explicitly says? In particular, pay attention to the opening and closing sentences of each of the story’s five sections.

3. Compare and contrast the use of storm imagery here and in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. In particular, how do the storms in the two works lead to radically different results?

4. How would the effect of the story differ if Bibi were not included? Compare and contrast his role in this story with the roles of the Pontellier children in The Awakening.

5. Compare and contrast this story with Ezra Pound’s poem "The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter," particularly in their presentations of marriage and in their use of nature symbolism.