"Her Letters" - Kate Chopin
In Kate Chopin’s “Her Letters,” a woman leaves a bundle of ambiguous letters to her husband to destroy once she passes away. Upon her command, he never opens the letters, but spirals out of control over what they may contain. Here are some questions to help look deeper into the text.
- How does Kate Chopin use allusions to the setting, nature, and the weather to convey the condition and emotions of the characters in the story?
- Contrast the way Chopin juxtaposes ‘promise’ made by the river to the man towards the end of the story with the lack of ‘promise’ offered by the sky to the woman towards the beginning. What could this symbolize within the context of Southern American society?
- Note the repetition Chopin employs throughout the story. Pick one instance of repetition and analyze how this adds to the deeper meaning of the story.
- Compare the status of women in Chopin’s “Her Letters” to in Child’s “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes” and what power do men hold over them in both stories.
One of the most powerful — and haunting — uses of repetition in Chopin’s "Her Letters” is at the end of the story when the husband realizes that the river is the only keeper of his wife’s secret. On page 103, Chopin writes: “He no longer sought to know from men and women what they dared not or could not tell him. Only the river knew.” She then describes his return to the spot on the bridge where he had previously thrown the letters. The following paragraph begins with the repetition of the phrase, “Only the river knew.” On the surface level, this repetition could be interpreted as a means to reinforce the reality that the content of the letters is truly in the sole possession of the river. But on a deeper level, this phrase suggests not only the personification of nature, but could also point towards the husband’s growing insanity.
ResponderExcluirThe personification of the river is clear; Chopin has given it the capacity for knowledge and memory. In doing so, she presents the river as the husband’s most truthful and knowledgeable confidant on the matter of his wife’s secret. Through its personification, the river contrasts the husband’s friends, who were unable to provide him with any revealing information about his wife. But, in repeating the phrase — “Only the river knew” — the reader is also subjected to a typical, repetitive thought pattern which oftentimes plagues people who are going mentally insane. The repetition of this phrase may have been a literary device used to illuminate the husband's increasing fixation on discovering the truth about his wife. This interpretation seems to be confirmed, at least on some level, by the final line of the story which suggests that the husband has jumped off the bridge in order to discover his wife’s secret.
Toward the end of the short story, “Her Letters,” by Kate Chopin, Chopin uses both anaphora and personification to enhance the meaning of the story. The sentence that Chopin repeats is “Only the river knew.” By using anaphora, the repetition of a word or a phrase at the beginning of more than one sentence, Chopin emphasizes the taunting river and the pain that the husband experiences. In movies and novels, when a person goes mad, writers often depict their “madness” by having the character repeat phrases over and over again, eyes wide, hair not combed, and lips murmuring. This is how I picture the husband toward the end of “Her Letters,” after he has gone mad from not knowing about the sins of his dead wife and her disloyalty. The repetition of “Only the river knew” also brings a piece of the husband into the narrative; although the narrator speaks in the third person, “Only the river knew” has the effect of coming directly from the thoughts of the husband, as opposed to being a part of the detached narrator’s interpretation. The river, the husband believes, holds the answers. And this is what he tells himself as he, tired, heartbroken, and desperate, ends his life.
ResponderExcluirDeath and life are two central themes throughout the story, and with this, existentialism as a theme is intertwined in the way the story is told.
ResponderExcluirWhile reading, I noticed a progression that expanded upon these. In the beginning, the woman feels both a thrill yet a deep anxiety about love, specifically towards a man who isn’t her husband. The emotions overpower her, and so she leaves the task to her husband for him to ultimately destroy them because “she was far from strong” (95).
She craved meaning, a tangible meaning, in her life through the letters, in which the narrator explains, “How desolate and empywould have been her remaining days without them; with only her thoughts, illusive thoughts that she could not hold in her hands and press” (96).
And then her life comes full circle when her illness finally overtakes her. Here, we begin to see the remnants of meaning she created in her life that still connect to her husband, even though she is gone, such as when he searches desperately throughout her room and rummages through her old books for some mark she had made while alive (101-2).
Yet her husband, through his own attempts to understand, falls into an unshakable state of existential angst. As he is searching and endlessly wondering, he finds that “This one thought was possessing him…It clutched his heart, making every breath of existence a fresh moment of pain” (101).
He cannot find an answer, and he has no way of doing so, either. He is at a loss. Rather than giving into this and continuing to live out the rest of his own life, he falls prey to the unending angst. He begins to lose pleasure in life, as he now starts to see the world around him as meaningless.
As Camus would put it, rather than trying to embrace the absurd and continue creating his own meaning in an inherently meaningless world, the husband eventually succumbs and joins his wife in the river.
Michael Neary
In Lydia Maria Child’s “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes” and Kate Chopin’s “Her Letters”, the authors use love, fidelity, and relationships to illuminate the status of women in the 19th century.
ResponderExcluirIn Child’s story women are depicted as powerless beings in their society, and this is particularly highlighted in Rosa’s side of the story. Rosa, being a slave, is forced to do as her master tells her because she is a slave. However, one could argue that simply being a woman in this time would have forced her to obey as well. This is seen in Marion’s relationship with her husband. Marion is forced to live with the infidelity of her husband, and she does not have the power in the relationship to question his actions. This power dynamic is also seen in Rosa’s relationship with George. In fact, George reacts with anger when he confronts Rosa about her relationship with their master, and this is met with Rosa saying, “What can I do? I am his slave” (Child 240). George reacts with anger because in many ways their secret marriage at the time branded Rosa as his. This possessive nature in marital relationships is also seen in Chopin’s story, but with a twist.
In Chopin’s tale, the husband is driven mad through his obsession with his wife’s fidelity. This is largely due to the, “man-instinct of possession” (Chopin 99) that is prevalent in all marital relationships at the time. The husband is obsessed with the idea that his wife could have been with someone else, and therefore not truly his. He doubts every man and believes that the, “men about him were no longer the friends of yesterday” (Chopin 101). However, in this relationship the wife, although dead, takes control of the power dynamic by using her secret letters. She drives her husband insane with the thought that she could have been with another man. This process breaks him, although he was, “a tall, powerful man” (Chopin 98), and illustrates the idea that women do have some power in this time. She knew he would not open the letters, and took control of him through this.
In many ways, these authors contrast the power women wield in relationships in the 19th century. In Child’s story, women are forced to cope with their status as inferior to men both because they are women and because of slavery. In Chopin’s story, the wife dominates her husband by using the “man-instinct of possession” against him.
Andres Gonzalez
I chose the instance of repetition in the introductory paragraphs of part 1 and 2 as it demonstrates Kate Chopin’s exploration of realism and naturalism in “Her Letters.” Chopin does not present the rain as a symbol, but rather, like another character in itself that is completely indifferent to human affairs. This concept reminds me a lot of the role of winter in Willa Cather’s My Antonia.
ResponderExcluirChopin begins part 2 by highlighting how “a year” has already passed, and the wife along with it. And yet, the seasons still run their natural course: the husband looks out as “the leaves were falling and rain pouring steadily from a leaden sky which held no gleam, no promise” (98), just as the wife looked out at “the rain falling steadily from a leaden sky in which there was no gleam, no rift, no promise” (94). Chopin’s repeated use of the adjective “leaden” paints the imagery of the sky as not only a dull gray, but creates the sense of its heaviness and slowness -as if the rain will never stop. This is supported by the repetition of the adverb “steadily,” which signifies the continuing strength of nature’s spirit juxtaposed with the fragility of the human spirit. Thus, Chopin reveals how Mother Nature does not even attempt to comfort the dying wife as she struggles with destroying the last remains of a lost love, or the husband as he mourns her. This is reinforced by the repetition of “no gleam,” implying that there is no sunshine to be found, showing further how the rain offers no hope and no silver lining. The passages even eliminate the possibility of a heaven or afterlife up in the skies as they hold “no promise[s]” for such human ideas. So from this, I got the sense that nature was basically living out an entirely separate storyline from that of the humans in “Her Letters," just as it does in reality.