Title: Foucault informs Kate Chopin's short fiction
Abstract: Abstract My essay discusses Michel Foucault's theory on power in relation to Kate Chopin's Storm and Desiree's Baby. I argue that due to reversals of power, Chopin's oppressed female protagonists challenge patriarchal structures and position themselves outside of strict social and moral codes of nineteenth century that Foucault alludes to in The History of Sexuality. Teachers of literature will find my paper useful because it approaches short fiction from historical, social, and gender-based perspectives. Scholars have written extensively on Kate Chopin, but not enough on her female characters in conjunction with theorists such as Michel Foucault and his theory on power and sexuality in The History of Sexuality. Also, most of criticism on Chopin in connection to Foucault's work tackles Chopin's most famous text, The Awakening. Matilde Martin Gonzalez looks at how Foucault's theoretical formulations on body apply to Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Robert Strozier's article covers several novels including a brief analysis of The Awakening and Foucault's theory on objective knowledge. I will look at how ideas on power and married life in nineteenth century as articulated by Foucault have echoes in Chopin's depictions of female characters from her short fiction. Foucault discusses strict social and moral codes of nineteenth-century married life and argues that husbands controlled sexual practices and sexuality of powerless individuals such as women, children, and slaves. As a southern female writer of region, Chopin empowers oppressed individuals such as women and people of mixed blood and addresses women's turmoil and struggle for autonomy in a time when white male masters, husbands, and fathers dictated rules in society. With women like Calixta from Storm and Desiree from Desiree's Baby, Chopin offers alternatives to stifling married life of period. By positioning these women outside of social norm and allowing them to reverse patriarchal norms and define themselves as free, Chopin creates two female characters who challenge patriarchal domination they have been subjected to and reverse power structures. Foucault talks about prestige of Don Juan in nineteenth century, stealer of wives, seducer of virgins, shame of families, and an insult to husbands and fathers ... individual driven ... by somber madness of (39). Don Juan represents what Foucault calls the order of which functions in opposition to the law of (39-40). Marriage and desire--two great systems for governing sex according to Foucault--clash in a story like Storm where Chopin focuses on illicit love. After Calixta engages into a sexual relation with Alcee during a storm, she welcomes her husband and son home--thus, subverting patriarchal institution of marriage with spirit of adventure. The love-making scene between two adulterers is as inevitable as storm and Calixta indulges herself in this experience unhesitatingly. At first, she is presented as a faithful and lawfully married wife who is sewing at window. But once her domestic system is reversed, she embraces a new set of order: love and desire outside marriage. While Alcee is definitely Don Juan character of story, Calixta could represent a feminine Don Juan as well because she seduces her seducer, mocks her own family life, and reverses power structures of nineteenth-century institutions. Calixta shows tension between strict law of marriage and adventurous realm of desire when she both conforms to role of faithful wife and then she engages in a sexual relation to Alcee. She is an over-scrupulous housewife (595) who sews, prepares supper for her family, and worries about her family. She is concerned about her loved ones wandering in rain and makes sure that nothing wrong had happened to them during storm: 'Oh, Bobinot! …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-03-22
Language: en
Type: article
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