Brewing Bimbo

About a month ago, my wife and I joined a group of our closest friends for dinner. Over some very refreshing margaritas we found ourselves engaged in a rather heated, yet equally stimulating discussion regarding human sexuality and more specifically the elements that separate us from the animals. Upon reading “The Storm” by Kate Chopin, I found myself relaying many thoughts I had that night along with some deeply embedded feelings regarding marriage and trust. Most importantly I found myself torn between the immediate scorns I felt for Calixta while at the same time recalling my argument to our friends that within the bowels of every person lays the basic, animalistic desire to procreate with multiple partners. It is the suppression of this urge that allows for trusting, bonding, safe, relationships we call marriages and ultimately what divides our sexuality from those of our wild cohabitants. Obviously, Chopin’s pi

The storm passing and Alcee having left Calixta, Bobinot and Bibi trudge home trough the mud ironically contemplating their explanation for filthy boots and trousers to an “over-scrupulous” wife. Obviously wrought with guilt, Calixta never utters one word of the expected raking and the dinner that followed muffled the quiet deceit with blankets of laughter that “could be heard as far away as Laballiere’s. Equally opportune was Chopin’s account of Alcee’s letter to his wife in Biloxi wherein he condones the convenience of her staying there for “her” pleasure, and also Clarisse’s response that she was “more than willing to give up the couple’s conjugal relationship for awhile longer.”

Chopin’s use of symbolism and irony coupled with the histrionics of the storm and our two lovers, only acts to support the true trickery and deceit that lies hidden at the end of the story. “The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain”; an effective all

Some topics in this essay:
Obviously Chopin’s, Laballiere’s Equally, Alcee Calixta, Kate Chopin, Virgin Mary, Brewing Bimbo, Bobinot Bibi, Alcee Lablliere, “the storm”,