My object is a wedding ring, which I chose to represent the conflict between the conventional view of marriage/morality, and the apparent immorality which Chopin seems to glorify in the text. I also interpreted from the text contrasts in gender roles, which also plays a role in our conception of marriage. The calm before the storm mirrors the calm with which Bobinot instructs Bibi in the science of storm prediction. Through the eyes of Bobinot and his son, the storm is an objective and predictable natural phenomenon that occurs “out there”, in nature. From their seats in the store, they observe the wrath of the storm as if they were simply watching the weather channel- with a clinical detachment more often associated with the empirical sciences.
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The setting shifts from the public scene of the store to the private space of the home, where Calixta is carrying out her daily chores in solitude. Unlike the male characters in the store simply watching the incoming storm with their objective gaze, Calixta feels the approaching storm in her body; she intuits the arrival of the storm in a manner that suggests she is not merely an observer of the storm, but a participant. Before she even realizes a storm is brewing, she is growing hot, “unfasten[ing] her white sacque at the throat”, which foreshadows the manner in which she experiences the storm as a kind of sexual …show more content…
Just as these two chapters represents a change in tone, so does is represent a change in character. Strikingly, the reader is called upon to resolve the seeming contradiction in Calixta's character between the 'good wife' she seems to be in chapter 3 and the 'bad wife' she seems to be in Chapter 2. It is here that my ring, a traditional symbol of the conventional meaning of marriage and love, comes into conflict with the ideals presented by Chopin. The separation between the Chapters 3 and 4 seems to imply a separation between sex and love that conventional morality does not seem to accept or acknowledge. The man-made ideal of marriage insists that sex and love always go together; a married woman's sexuality is expected to always revolve exclusively around her husband. Chopin challenges this ideal by confronting her reader with these two unresolved profiles of Calixta: the adulterous and/or devoted wife. No matter the strategy used to reconcile the two, we must always first question our preconceptions of sex, marriage, love, gender, morality, etc., and it is by drawing us into these spaces that Chopin encourages us to fill them with our own emotional/intellectual
The setting shifts from the public scene of the store to the private space of the home, where Calixta is carrying out her daily chores in solitude. Unlike the male characters in the store simply watching the incoming storm with their objective gaze, Calixta feels the approaching storm in her body; she intuits the arrival of the storm in a manner that suggests she is not merely an observer of the storm, but a participant. Before she even realizes a storm is brewing, she is growing hot, “unfasten[ing] her white sacque at the throat”, which foreshadows the manner in which she experiences the storm as a kind of sexual …show more content…
Just as these two chapters represents a change in tone, so does is represent a change in character. Strikingly, the reader is called upon to resolve the seeming contradiction in Calixta's character between the 'good wife' she seems to be in chapter 3 and the 'bad wife' she seems to be in Chapter 2. It is here that my ring, a traditional symbol of the conventional meaning of marriage and love, comes into conflict with the ideals presented by Chopin. The separation between the Chapters 3 and 4 seems to imply a separation between sex and love that conventional morality does not seem to accept or acknowledge. The man-made ideal of marriage insists that sex and love always go together; a married woman's sexuality is expected to always revolve exclusively around her husband. Chopin challenges this ideal by confronting her reader with these two unresolved profiles of Calixta: the adulterous and/or devoted wife. No matter the strategy used to reconcile the two, we must always first question our preconceptions of sex, marriage, love, gender, morality, etc., and it is by drawing us into these spaces that Chopin encourages us to fill them with our own emotional/intellectual