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Sunday, February 6, 2011
Good morning Sunday Saloners. I've been reading a lot of short stories online lately.
Maybe it's because I have a short attention span, but I've always enjoyed a good short story. It's like a quick dose of fiction I can savor, and have a small sense of accomplishment after I'm done reading. Some of my favorite short stories are actually Edgar Allan Poe's work, he always sets the mood perfectly and his stories give a good dose of the macabre. I've also been reading some of Kate Chopin's work, I've been a fan of hers since reading The Awakening.
What about you? Do you enjoy reading short stories? What are some of your favorites?
I will leave you with a review of a short story I recently read called
The Storm by Kate Chopin.
Enjoy your Sunday :) 
title: The Storm
author: Kate Chopin
genre: short story/fiction
written: 1898
source: http://www.americanliterature.com/
first line: The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain.
Set in Louisiana, The Storm
opens with young Bibi and his father Bobinôt, at the general store.
Clouds and thunder start to form announcing an upcoming rain storm. Bibi worries over his mother who is home alone, but his father assures him she will be safe inside the house, while they wait out the storm at the store.
Calixta is home alone when the storm starts to develop. She puts her sewing down and goes outside to gather the laundry from the line so it won't get rained on when she sees her old flame Alcée Laballière ride in. Calixta allows him inside her home to wait out the downpour.
Once he is inside the storm really starts to get bad and Calixta begins to worry for her son. Laballière tries to assure her that her son will be just fine and tries to calm her down, grabbing her by the shoulders at one point.
The contact of her warm, palpitating body when he had unthinkingly drawn her into his arms, had aroused all the old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh.
In the middle of this torrential downpour, the two old flames reignite and they have a passionate encounter. After they are done, the storm passes and Laballière rides off to his home. He writes a letter to his own wife, who is away on a trip with their children telling her he misses her but is doing fine himself and she needn't rush home.
Calixtas husband and son arrive soon after, worried that she will be upset at them for being out in the storm and worrying her. Instead Calixta is happy to see them and has started dinner already. She covers her son and husband with kisses.
Funny thing about The Storm is that I read it many years ago and didn't realize until now it was Kate Chopin who wrote it. The story intrigued me then and it still does.
I can see why The Storm would be considered scandalous in Chopin's day. She wrote it in 1898 but it was not published until 1969, sixty-five years after her death.
Nowadays we are used to romance novels and this type of passionate writing is common.
The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.
These two people are overtaken by their passion, the storm itself is metaphor for that intensity.
She went and stood at the window with a greatly disturbed look on her face. She wiped the frame that was clouded with moisture. It was stiflingly hot. Alcée got up and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the distant wood in a gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant.
The Storm
is passionate and intense. Kate Chopin was not afraid to write about a woman who had a whirlwind affair and enjoyed it. Calixta suffered no guilt, neither did Laballière. As the storm built so did their desire. I wonder if there were no storm, would the affair have occurred?
They both enjoyed their tumultuous sexual encounter, neither judging the other for it. Chopin wrote this at a time when women weren't even supposed to have sexual desires, let alone act upon them. Chopin was way ahead of her time.
