[In the following essay, Simpson discusses images of nature and society in “A Shameful Affair.”]

Mildred Orme, in Kate Chopin's “A Shameful Affair,” is a socially conventional and sexually repressed young woman who has come to the Kraummer farm to escape the sexual demands that were made on her in civilized, urban society. Chopin uses fertile nature imagery to show Mildred being drawn out of the realm of sheltered social convention and into a natural world that is rich with sensuous physical surroundings. Here Mildred is forced to recognize and struggle with her sexuality.

Mildred is obviously a young woman who has continually repressed the sexual side of her nature. She is attracted to Fred Evelyn from the first time she sees him and goes out of her way to get his attention. After he has refused her request to drive her to church, she walks down to the river where she knows he will be fishing. She knows he will be alone, because earlier “all the other farmhands had gone forth in Sunday attire” (150). Even though it is obvious to the reader that Mildred is pursuing Fred, she conceals this knowledge from herself. She labels Fred as a “clumsy farmhand” and notes quite inaccurately that “farmhands are not so very nice to look at” (148). After she has had her sexual nature awakened by his kiss, she tells herself that the desire she feels for him is a “shameful whim that chanced to visit her soul, like an ugly dream” (152). Mildred has been able to avoid facing her sexual repression in the past only because she has been away in a civilized, urban environment where social conventions have allowed her to keep men at arm's length. She has “refused [her] half dozen offers” (149) and ironically has come to the farm to seek “the repose that would enable her to follow exalted lines of thought” (150).

The imagery that Chopin uses to describe the farm and Mildred's relation to it reveals that Mildred has entered a sensuous environment that she is trying to resist by clinging to symbols of civilization. The farmhouse itself, as a man-made structure, can be considered an island of civilization amidst the “swelling acres [of] undulating wheat” that “gleam in the sun like a golden sea” (148) and connote pulsating fertility. At first Mildred remains “seated in the snuggest corner of the big front porch of the Kraummer farmhouse,” behind her “Browning or her Ibsen” (148), which conveys the image of someone who is trying to isolate herself intellectually in a farmhouse that is itself isolated in an ocean of natural fertility.

Mildred has to abandon her island of civilized social convention when she becomes interested in Fred Evelyn, and nature begins to take its effect on her when she does. She must go down a “long, narrow footpath through the bending wheat” (150) to encounter Fred at the river. This footpath is like a tunnel through the “yellow wheat” that reaches “high above her waist” (150) on either side, which suggests the nearly overwhelming aspect of the fecundity that is almost enveloping her. Mildred's close contact with her sensuous surroundings causes her own repressed sexuality to come to the surface. Her brown eyes become “filled with a reflected golden light” (150) from the wheat as she passes through it, and her lips and cheeks become “ripe with color that the sun had coaxed there” (150). Nature has now begun to erode the self-control that Mildred has exercised over her passions.

Mildred's losing battle against the effects of the fertility around her is conveyed through Chopin's inspired use of imagery during the scene at the river. While she is watching Fred fish, Mildred is standing very still and “holding tight to the book she had brought with her” (150). The book is a sort of life-preserver (a repression-preserver, rather), a symbol of civilization and social restraint. When she “carefully” lays the book down and takes into her hands the phallic fishing pole that Fred gives her, she has given in to her sexual instincts. The voluntary act of setting aside the book and picking up the pole symbolically foreshadows her willing participation in the passionate kiss that follows.

After she has unwittingly and temporarily surrendered to her sexual desires at the river, Mildred once again retreats into her customary repressive behavior. When she feels the first moment of shame after Fred has kissed her, she determines to return to her room in the farmhouse. She will be isolated from nature there, and she can “give calm thought to the situation, and determine then how to act” (151). Only when she is back on the “very narrow path” through “the wheat that [is] heavy and fragrant with dew” (153) is she able to admit to herself what Chopin has already shown to the reader in the scene at the river: she is partly responsible for Fred's impulsive kiss. Being greatly disturbed at this knowledge, she tells Fred that she hopes to someday be able to forgive herself (153).

Chopin's theme in “A Shameful Affair,” the enlightened idea that sexual repression is harmful, is brought out by her contrasting images of civilized society and liberating natural fecundity. Mildred's consistent retreat from sexuality, associated with symbols of societal repression, causes her to become a troubled and confused young woman. She will never be a complete and healthy human being, Chopin is saying, until she comes to terms with the “golden, undulating sea” of her passions.

Reference

Chopin, Kate. “A Shameful Affair.” The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin. ed. Barbara H. Solomon. (New York: Signet, 1976) 148-53.