Chopin, Kate - Lawrence I. Berkove (essay date 1996)
Lawrence I. Berkove (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: Berkove, Lawrence I. “‘Acting Like Fools’: The Ill-Fated Romances of ‘At the 'Cadian Ball’ and ‘The Storm’.” In Critical Essays on Kate Chopin, edited by Alice Hall Petry, pp. 184-96. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1996.
[In the following essay, Berkove elucidates Chopin's attitude toward adultery and morality as evinced through her stories “At the 'Cadian Ball” and “The Storm.”]
Since its long-delayed publication in 1969, “The Storm” has generally been read as Kate Chopin's protest at the narrow and unnatural morality of turn-of-the-century America. The story's startling last sentence in particular has been taken to be her boldly amoral stand on an adulterous affair between two young and willing participants. This critical position is not hard to understand, considering the revolutionarily frank sensuality of the story's scene of passion. Inasmuch as Chopin's novel...
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