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The Storm Thesis

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The Storm is a fiction short story that was written in July 1898 by Kate Chopin and focuses on the sexuality of the lead character Calixta. The story begins when Calixta’s husband Bobinot and his four year old son Bibi are caught by a storm at the Friedheimer's store. Meanwhile Bobinot’s wife Calixta is back at home and finds herself in a great storm of her own. The storm in this case has been used by Chopin in a symbolic manner that would mean dreadful occurrence of sexual passion that Calixta experienced; it led her to commit adultery with a former lover named Alcee. This story describes the desire to seek sexual fulfillment and freedom outside of marriage.
I am going to show how Chopin’s use of symbolism, setting, and tone reinforce my thesis statement. Throughout this paper I will be using the Gender criticism to see “The Storm” as a reflection of the author’s life and times as well as the life and times of the characters in the story. The reason I chose this school of criticism is to demonstrate how plot details, settings, and characters of the story reflect on or are representative of events, settings, and people in the author’s life. This school will also help me demonstrate possible reaction to the culture in which the author lived.
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Calixta had a feeling that there was something missing, unfulfilling or unsatisfying in her life that gave a lot of pressure in her married life and contributed to the misfortunes in her family. Initially, Calixta was depicted as hard on the husband when the writer mentioned that after the storm her husband was prepared for the worst when meeting the over-scrupulous housewife, making them to enter through the back door cautiously (Chopin 1998). Alcee and his wife Clarisse, was stated to be in a sexless marriage. This shows that both Calixta and Alcee were only trying to fulfill their sexual desires sexual

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