Historical Criticism Essay
“Understanding a literary work by investigating the social, cultural and intellectual context that produced it” (2023) is known as historical criticism. In the short story The Storm, there are some key features that show that the story can be pieced apart by historical criticism. For example the names of the characters and where they live give a little background information of their culture and also we get a good sense of the time from the fact that the husband and son have to sit out the storm. The time era in which Chopin wrote the story even helps the reader understand what she went through to get any of her work published.
The setting of The Storm is absolutely everything in this story. Chopin brings the reader in during a storm. The hurricane sets up the entire story. If the hurricane had never happened Calixta would have never had the affair and her family would not be stuck waiting the storm out in a store. If there was no storm, there would not really be a story because one main ideas or plot of the story is the affair. Ideally when people think of someone cheating on their spouse they think of the husband cheating. This story was written in the 19th century, and before then not many people would think of the wife cheating on the husband. Chopin does a great job of letting the reader see in to Calixta’s eyes in being the unfaithful one instead of the husbands being unfaithful. Chopin opened many eyes by showing that the man or husband is not always the unfaithful one in a relationship but women can sometimes be the unfaithful one. The theme the reader can get from this is that cheating on your spouse can go both ways not only one.
The storm and how Calixta acts are very similar. The storm can symbolize how Calixta feels in inside of her. Storms can be unpredictable and the fact that she cheated on her husband threw the reader because she seemed so in love with her husband. Also thought out the story