Calixta in "The Storm" by Kate Chopin is a wife, a mother, a woman with many
desires. Her marriage with Bobinot seems to lack that sexiness, that passion couples of a
much later time shared. She is a victorian woman whose main job is to satisfy her
husband and maintain the home. Throughout her marriage, Calixta has been denied those
wonderful sensations a woman feels during sex, during orgasm.
The storm arrives, and Calixta is alone at home. Her husband and son are at a
store and remain there during the storm for shelter. Back home, Alcee, a past lover of
Calixta's, arrives asking if he can stay while the storm passes.
Of course he can stay. This is what Calixta has been waiting for, she may not
realize it, but she wants it, her body needs it. With Chopin's double meaning passages
she prepares the reader for what's coming. Oh boy, and who's coming? Calixta, and
does she ever! Her whole body is in ecstacy, her mouth, her breasts, her flesh. She loves
it, she's having fun, she's laughing because this is new to her, and she finally feels what
a woman should truly feel like. Hmmm...but, these emotions weren't given to her by
her husband, they were from a lover, an outsider.
Has she done wrong? Yes, I think so. She's been unfaithful, but....BUT....she
now has something she didn't have before. She now can take this sexual knowledge of
her body and share it with her husband. They can now share an orgasm together,
something beautiful and energizing between lovers. She has now become a woman and
knows what her body wants, needs, desires and aches for. Calixta dismisses her affair
with Alcee, and sees it as a new beginning for Bobinot and her.
Temptation is a very malicious power, sort of two-faced. It can bring great
pleasures, and at the same time devastation to others, it can fix
...