Kate Chopin wrote her fictional story, “The Storm” in a time period where women were to be purely housewives. Their desires and needs were not considered in everyday living. This story contradicts those thoughts and show how nature happens together with the needs of personal satisfaction. Chopin uses symbolism of nature and the needs of people on how they must and will be satisfied in order to sustain life. There is a connection between the incoming thunder storm outside and the storm of emotions that are being felt between Calixta and Alcee. The intensity of the affair follows the pattern of the storm that is taking place outside. The approaching storm has been brewing for some time “… certain somber clouds that were rolling with sinister …show more content…
Her husband John, who is a doctor, rented a colonial mansion for the summer in hopes that this beautiful house will help his wife. Being a doctor he is prescribing her to have a “rest” period. John hopes that the change of scenery and being away from city life will help. He has forbid her to write which she feels will help her improve and also fobbing her to see anyone. John picked a room that the narrator did not like. She describes it as “The paint and the paper…It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroying themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 487) The “rest” period she was prescribed in this room drove her to the brink of insanity over the several months that she was there. The woman seems to use the wallpaper as an image of her being trapped. Stuck in her own mind, she is seeing herself in the wallpaper, when she is ripping off the paper she maybe feels as she is ripping herself inside an internal struggle or conflict she is trying to break free