[In the following essay, Branscomb discusses the importance of time in “Ripe Figs.”]

Kate Chopin's “Ripe Figs” (1:199), though one of the most interesting pieces in A Night in Acadie (1897), has received relatively little critical comment, possibly because of its brevity (under three hundred words) and its apparent simplicity. In the only extended treatment the story has received, Elaine Gardiner calls it “barely … a sketch” (379), although she effectively makes the case for its charm and its importance among Chopin's works. Like others who comment on the story (Ewell 100; Skaggs 27), Gardiner emphasizes the importance of contrasts, natural imagery, and cyclical patterns in the plot and argues that the story presents a harmonious relationship between the representatives of youth and age within the natural cycles of human life. While acknowledging the importance of the motifs Gardiner points out, I shall argue that another sense of time is crucial in “Ripe Figs” and that the work is not so rudimentary as it may at first seem. Far more than a sketch, it subtly presents much deeper conflicts and richer themes than have hitherto been observed. The relationship between the two characters is less harmonious than Gardiner suggests, and the calendar of the church is as important to the story as the cycles of nature.

The plot of “Ripe Figs” is simple. A young girl, Babette, wants to visit relatives on the Bayou-Lafourche, “where the sugar cane grows” (1:199). Her godmother, Maman-Nainaine, says she may go when the figs ripen. Time passes slowly for the impatient girl, and when the figs finally are ripe she thinks they are late, while Maman-Nainaine is surprised at how early they are. Nevertheless, Maman-Nainaine says that Babette may go, and that she is to tell her Tante Frosine that Maman-Nainaine expects to see her (Frosine) “at Toussaint—when the chrysanthemums are in bloom” (1:199). The story is graceful and quietly humorous, and the theme of youth and age in relation to time is clearly conveyed.

Chopin gives Maman-Nainaine the last word in the story, and the crux of my argument lies in her concluding words about seeing Aunt Frosine at Toussaint. Gardiner, like most readers of the story, assumes that Toussaint is a place name. While this is indeed possible, it is far more likely, in the context of this time-ridden story, that Maman-Nainaine is using the French term for All Saints Day, November 1, as the time of the meeting to come. She thus reinforces her reference to a season in nature by naming a specific day in the religious calendar. Recognizing the time reference has important implications for the character of Maman-Nainaine and her relationship with her goddaughter, and for the theme of the story as a whole.

It is tempting to see Maman-Nainaine as embodying merely a benevolent aspect of the rhythms of nature—“the tranquil energy of nature's continuity,” as Gardiner characterizes her (381). She does, after all, first tie Babette's visit to Bayou-Lafourche to the ripening of the figs, and when the fruit appears, she relishes it. However, through the specification of Toussaint, which was both a major feast and also a socially important day when families customarily met to visit family graves (Bonner 150), Chopin reinforces the dominant pattern of religious references made about Maman-Nainaine: She is Babette's godmother; she is stately, with patience like that of a statue of the Virgin; and her cap stands “like an aureole about her white, placid face” (1:199). The cumulative images and her naming of Toussaint suggest that she represents not just a mature phase of a natural cycle; she embodies even more a belief in the world of the spirit and an awareness of death that are unknown to the ripening girl. She knows that the chrysanthemum is the flower of the dying year, the time when the family reunites, not to eat the sugar cane of Bayou-Lafourche, but to commune with the dead.

Besides broadening the thematic concerns of the story, this aspect of Maman-Nainaine's personality contributes considerably to both the sense of conflict and the humor in the story. At first the conflict seems to involve merely the different perspectives of age and youth on the passage of time and the coming of maturity. Maman-Nainaine says that the girl may eat sugar cane at the proper season, when the figs ripen. Though the narrator says with mock naivete, “Not that the ripening of figs had the least thing to do with it” (1:199), the common association of the fig with female sexuality suggests that Maman-Nainaine's restriction goes beyond a simple lesson in patience. Rather than being just markers of the seasons, as Gardiner suggests (381), the figs, like the chrysanthemums, are thus significant in themselves. When Babette produces the long-awaited figs for her godmother, Maman-Nainaine arches her eyebrows and says the fruit has ripened very early. She is perturbed at the disruption of her timetable for Babette, and her peeling “the very plumpest figs with her pointed silver fruit-knife” (1:199) sets a slightly ominous tone for the conclusion of the story. Her final instruction to Babette is therefore only partially an acquiescence in the girl's departure and all that it symbolizes; it is also a drily witty assertion of control and a veiled suggestion that though ripeness may be all, Babette's understanding of the nature of ripeness is incomplete. The reunion in the fall will come not just whenever the flowers of autumn choose to bloom, but on the appointed holy day, All Saints. The story thus concludes with the implication that there are other seasons than those of nature and that the desires of youth must be balanced by the deeper understanding of age.

Works Cited

Bonner, Thomas. The Kate Chopin Companion. New York: Greenwood, 1988.

Chopin, Kate. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Vol. 1. Ed. Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969. 199. 2 vols.

Ewell, Barbara. Kate Chopin. Boston: Twayne, 1985.

Gardiner, Elaine. “‘Ripe Figs’: Kate Chopin in Miniature.” Modern Fiction Studies 28 (1982): 379-82.

Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin. Boston: Twayne, 1985.