ALLEN STEIN
North Carolina State University
Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk
Stockings": The Marital Bvirden and
the Lure of Consumerism
I T IS NO NEWS THAT, FAILING TO FIND FiiLFii.i.MENT ill their marriages, wives
in Kate Chopin's fution arc sometimes driven In their desperation to
suicide, adultery, or desertion. But in "A Pair of Silk Stockings,"' a story too
rarely discussed at length, Chopin presents a woman who tries a different
expedient to escape the difficulties imposed by her marriage, a brief foray
into the realm of consumerism. The effort fails, as Chopin shows that,
however fashionable what Thoretein Veblen called "conspicuous consunij>
tion" might seem in the expanding national economy of the late 1890s, it
can offer only ephemeral and illnsoiy gratifications for one enmeshed in the
enduring constraints imposed by her marriage.
Finding herself "the unexpected possessor" of fifteen dollai"s, "litde
Mi's. Sonimers," who has known "better days," now long past, "before she
had ever thought of being Mrs. Sonimei"s," decides iinniediately to tise ihe
money for children's clothing so tliat she might have "her little brood
looking fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives" (p. 500).-' On
inipulse, however, this long-deprived woman spends all the money on
hct^elf, striving for one day at least of self-indulgence, one day thai might
liint of some personal autonomy in a pinched and narrowed existence.
' Tlie Complete Worki of Kate Chitfiiii. ed. Per Seyersied (Baton Rouge; Louisiana Slat
University Press, 1969). "A Pair of Silk Stockings" was first published in Vogiif in September
1897.
'Sign! fi randy, Choptn never says how many are in (he "brood," merely mentioning
"Janie" and "Mag" and "ihi* boys." Her iiidenniteness siibdy suggests a number loo Uiige for
Mrs. Sommers to cope with comfortably, too large to allow her anything butaii unending round
of harried duty.
At a quick glance, Mrs. Sommers's effort seems something of a
success. She buys herself a pair of silk stockings and then, to complement
them, one pair of costly shoes and one of kid gloves; next, ber spree in the
store completed, she treats herself to two "high-priced magazines," browses
through them while having a pleasant lunch in an upscale restaurant, an<l
closes her day by attending the theater for a matinee perfonnance. She has
enjoyed herself thoroughly. Fiirthcr, as Doris Davis sees it. Mi's. Sommers
has used her money "to nurture her sense of esthetics, an action that
Chopin seems to suggest is iniportani for this character's development."^
Davis goes on to argue that "Mrs. Sommers has developed a feeling of
independence and fulfillment in herjudicious use ofmoney, and might well
serve as a model for Edna Poiuellier's emerging sense of aiuonomy" {j3.
148). Similarly, Mary E. Papke comments that Mrs. Sommers, "physically and
spiritually exhausted, arrives 'at [a] moment of contemplation and action.'
In choosing to huy the pair of silk stockings, she 'experiences a sensuous
moment' that reawakens her female
^
A close look, though, hoth at Mrs. Sommers's little rehellious spree
and what precedes it, indicates, as I noted, something ciecitiedly less
hopeful, and that is that Mrs. Sommers, from the moment she gets the
fifteen dollars to the moiufiit ihai she has spent every hit of it, never has any
more autonomy than she has hati at any recent point in her married life.
Rather than confronting the terrible constraints under which she labors,
rather than seeking through siuh confrontation to forge what MeKille
characterizes as a "sovereign sense of self," Mrs. Sommers, understandably
enough but also sadly, seeks merely escape from her life and from herself
through her brief flight into consumerism. Such venturing, Chopin conveys
implicitly here, is futile and devoid tiltimately of anything approximating
meaningful freedom. Peggy Skaggs notes aptly tliat "the reader feels deep
compassion" for Mrs. Sommers.^ One might add that what is perhaps most
tminfr. The Economics ofTenaion." in KattiCJiopin HAtmsiHrrrd, ed. Lynd
S.Boren and Sara deSaus3iireDa\is (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Sute University Press, 1992], p.
148.
Abyss (New York: Greenwood, 1990), p. 65.
^Katf Clwpin (New York: Twayne. 1985), p. 60.
358
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERI.Y
poignant, filially, about her situation is tliai her reaction against her
circumstances is both so abortive and so misdirected.
Appropriately, the story opens with an implicit suggeshon that this
woman is more one caught up in circumstiinces ihuii a shapcr of them—she
is, after all, as the first line asserts, one "who found hei"self tlie unexpected
possessor of fifteen dollars." She does attempt, however, to take charge of
this patheticlittle windfall, as tbe "question of investment... occupied her
greatly," and she is "absorbed in spectUation and calculation," lying awake
at night "revolving plans in her mind" for "a proper andjudicious tise of the
money."*' Tfie right use of the money. Mi's. Sommers finally concludes, of
course, is to buy much-needed clothing for her children, and she menially
apportions the funds according to their needs. This is typical of her, as
invariably "tlu- needs of the present absorbed her ever)' faculty" (pp.
500-501), and she has come to know the "value of bargains" and has learned
to "elbow her way" ihroiigh a crowd "if need be" and (o "clulch a piece of
goods and bold it antl slick to it with persistence and determination till her
turn came to be served" (p. 501). This, then, Chopin establishes, is a woman
capable of decision and determination whose latitude for genuinely
meaningful choice has been reduced drastically.
Noihiug that occurs once Mrs. Sommers begins her shopping foray
ever really widens Lhis narrow range of actual possibility for bn that Cbopin
establishes at the start of the tale. Arriving at tlie department store for "tlie
shopping bout," Mrs. Sommers is, Cbopin notes, "a little faint and tired,"
having actually foigotten to eat lunch, "between getting the childrt-n fed
and the place righted." While seated at a counter, "trying to gather strength
and courage to charge through an eager multitude that was besieging
breast-works of shirting and figured lawn," she feels au "all-gone limp
feeling" come over her, and she rests her hand "aimlessly upon the
counter." Gradually, she "grew aware that her hand had encountered
something very soothing, very pleasant to touch," the silk stockings that
prompt her to the first of the purchases for hei^self. For a moment Mrs.
^Chopin's use of words like "investmem" and "speculation" for surh a small sum
certainly elicits the rompassion of which Skaggs speaks and is also perhaps a touching reminder
of the "better clays" Mn, Sommers has known, days when any possibilities of investment or
speculation might have involved sums far greater than fifteen dollars.
KATE CHOPIN'S "A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS"
359
Sommers tries to resist their soft allure. Thus, when asS^N^^l asks her if she
wishes to examine the store's "line of silk hosiery," Mrs. Sommei's smiles
"Just as if she had been asked to inspect a dara of diamonds with the
ultimate view of purcha.sing it." However, as "she went on feeling the soft,
sheeny luxurious things—with botli hauds now, . . . [feeling] them glide
serpent-like through her fingers," the "two hectic blotches" that "came
suddenly iuto her pale cheeks" indicate that she has been seized by a
yearning more powerful than her commiunent to domesticity, and she asks,
"Do you think there are any eights-and-a-half among these?" (p. 501).
Mrs. Sommers's first step, then, into an afternoon of self-indulgence
begins not witb a carefully thought-out decision but witli a pleasant pbysical
sensation made all the more appealing by hunger, fatigue, lightheadedness,
and a moment's release from tbe frantic roimtl of responsibility. Furtber,
though Chopin's account of how the "soft, sheeny luxurious" stockings seem
to "glide serj>ent-like through her fingers" is obviously in the ti"aditional
language of temptation and thus would seem to invoke moral choice, that
suggestion can ouly be Chopin's ironic reminder that an ethical framework
grounded in religious teaching does not apply here, for she shows that
choice itself, whether moral or inimoral,justdoesuot come into play in this
woman's situation. At most, the notion that the temptation to buy for
oneself is sinful is merely an irtclcvancy tbat Mi's. Sommers's tired,
duty-driven mind conjures up out of habit before impulse carries her along.
Lest there be any confusion about this, Chopin states explicitly that
Mrs. Sommers "was not going throtigh any acute mental process or
reasoning with herself," indeed "was not thinking at all" and instead
"seemed for the time" to have "abandoned herself to some mechanical
iinptilse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility" (p. 502).'
Thus, ironically enough, if Mrs. Sommers has little latitude for free choice
in her dutiful daily life, she seems to have even less as she yields to the
impulse to self-indulgence. In fact, not only do fatigue and long deprivation
prompt her to yield to impulse rather than to make conscious choices, the
'Bernard Koloski notes in this connection that "what Kate Chopin calls 'impulse* runs
strong in many of her works, but seldom docs it dominate a narrative as completely as il does
in 'APairofSilk Stockings'" {KatfOiopin: A Study of tJw Short Pirlion lNewYork;Twaynt'. 1996],
p. 73).
360
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY
sorts of self-indulgence to which she is impelled to yield seem less a
reflection of needs or aspiraiions intrinsic to her own naiiire than a
reflection of ilie artificially induced needs and aspirations of a consumer
society. The story tlius coiifimis Papke's observation that one of Chopin's
priniaiy "general themes" is "the role of social determinism in class and
pei"soiiat crises" (p. 3).
Barbara C. Ewell notes tellingly that "the power of money to
enhance sell^steem and confidence is tlie core of this poignant tale."** More
specifically, one might obser\'e, Chopin shows tliat the \'alue society places
on having money can foster the insidious and niisgnided self-esteem that
arises merely from believing one has acciuired sunns in tlie eyes of otliers.
Thus, as soon as Mrs. Sommers has pnt on the silk stockings tliat she bought
on impulse, she "crossed sti"aighi over to the shoe deparuncm and look her
seat lo be fitted," and the fitting itself is manifesdy a part of the pleasure she
derives in buying the costly pair of shoes she does. Wiih the girl at the glove
counter, as we have seen, she had asked timidly, "Do yon think there are any
eights-and-a-half among these?" (p. 501). Now, though, on the strength of
one purchase, one new addition to her wardrobe, her whole demeanor with
the store's sales staff changes. Now she is "fastidious," and, noting that "the
clerk could not make her ont . . . could not reconcile her shoes with her
stockings," she shows that "she was not too easily pleased." Tiying on shoes
to go with her new stockhigs, she takes satisfaction in observing that "her
foot and ankle looked veiy pretty," and, Chopin relates, she tells "tlie young
fellow who served her" that "she wanted an excellent and stylishfit"and "did
not mind the difference of a dollar or two more in the price so long as she
got what she desired." Completing her ptirchase ofthe shoes, Mrs. Sommers
is immediately at the glove counter—Chopin, in fact, does not even describe
her getting there; instead she simply notes, "Now she rested her elbow on
the cushion of the glove counter," suggesting how swiftly the growing
momentum of impulse and the sudden desperate yearning for quickly
attained self-esteem are carrying Mrs. Soinmei"s along. At this new venue she
relaxes luxuriously when "a pretty, pleasant young creatine, delicate and
deft of touch, [draws] a long-wristed'kid'over Mrs. Sommers'hand." So in
the space of perhaps twenty minntes Mrs. Soimnere's response has
undergone a marked transformation. Shyness and insecurity have given way
"Katr Chopin (NewYork: Unger, 1986), p. 11'J.
KATE CHOPIN'S "A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS"
361
to a certain self-satisfaction and calculated effort to impress and ihen,
finally, to acceptance of attention from the pretty (and no donht poorly
paid) "creatnrc" at the counter as her dne—and all hecause she has spent
some money on a few fashionahle items of clothing.
In 1899, two years after the publication of "A Pair of Silk Stockings,"
Thorstein Vehlen ohserved tliat "since the consumption of . . . more
excellent goods is an evidence of wealth, it becomes more honorific; and
conversely, the failure to consume in due quantity aud quality becomes a
mark of inferiorit)' and demerit."'* Clearly a product of her society, though
obviously not of its "leisure class," Mrs. Sommers, Chopin shows, stu ctimbs
to the pervasive social pressure and struggles to avoid the stigma of
"inferiority and demerit." Similarly, Philip Fisher has noted of the
connection between one's sense of self and shopping in modem tnhan
America that "the self-experience and recognitioti reached earlier hy
thinking is, under the conditions of the city, obtained by shopping."'"
Ftirther, it is noteworthy, as well, that Mrs. Sommers is shopping in a
depaiunent store, for as Alan Trachtenberg has obseiTed in his The
Incorporation of America,^* deparunent stores have long thrived on inspiring
the belief that merely purchasing items in stich large, well-rnn, mo<letn
establishments as theirs makes one somehow succe.ssful, part of all that is
fashionable and therefore estimable. Consequently, though Mrs. Sonnners
might seem to be suddenly asserting a longing for personal autonomy in the
midst of an existence of dreary constraint, she is actually a driven being,
prodded by the conspicuous spending of all those about her and, like all of
them, manipulated by tJiose who shape the ideology and practice of
consumerism.
On leaving the department store, Mrs. Sommers, newly clad,
appears a different woman from the humble, put-upon one who entered it.
With her new shoes, stockings, and gloves, she seems to feel herself more
' 7 V Ttumy ofthe l.ns»rr Class {New York: Vanguard. 1926), p. 74.
'""Looking Around to See Who I Am: Dreiser's Tenitory of the Self." A/-//. 44 (1977),
732.
"New York: Hill and Wang. 1982.
362
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY
the woman she was in those "better days" before she had "ever tliought of
being Mi's. Sonuners." Thus she huN'S two costly magazines, "such as she had
been accustomed lo read in ihe days when she had been accustomed to
other pleasant things." Significantly, she carries the magazines conspicuously, "without wrapping," apparently eager to show ail about hcriliat she
can afford tliem. At sueet crossings, "as well as she could she lilted her
skirts," presumably so that those passing might note her fashionable shoes
and stockings. Mrs. Sonnners's purchases, saj-s Chopin, "had worked marvels
in her bearing—had given her a feeling of assurance, a sense of belonging
to the well-dressed multitude" (p. 503), a sense of belonging, obviously, that
she has not known since her marriage and that she has missed a good deal
more tlian she has realized. Chopin's use of "nniltitude" here is suggestive,
for, as Veblen asserts, "consumption becomes a larger element in the
standard of living in the ciiy than in the country" becatise "a relatively
greater expenditure in tliis direction is required to indicate a given degree
of pecuniary decency in the city" (p. 88). Similarly, as Dreiser would show
with his own fer\'ent sho]>per Carrie Meeber,Just a few years after Chopin's
lale, the urban ( rowds make the impressionable eager holh to fn in and to
stand out splendidly through the conspicuotis fashionable ness of their
appearance. The sadness and futility that Dreiser, Veblen, and Fisher would
subsequently see as inherent in such desperate yearning on the tn ban scene
are conveyed strikingly by Chopin as she depicts the rest of Mrs. Sommers's
poignant afternoon spree.
Even with her new clothing it appears that for Mrs. Sommers to
maintain her sense ofbelonging she must keep spending—and spending in
ways of which the "well-dressed nniltitude" would approve. Thus to appease
her hunger—which is offered here by Chopin as at once literal and
niftaphorical—Mrs. Sommers goes into a restatnant. Another time, she
would have "stilled the cravings for fooii" miul reaching home, but now "the
impulse that was guiding her would not suffer her to entertain any such
tliought." The restaurant she enters is one she has only seen from the
otitside previously, catching "glimpses of spotless damask and shining
crystal, and soft-stepping waiters semng people of fashion." As with Dreiser's
Carrie, the restatirant becomes for Mrs. Sonnners a place where one does
not merely enjoy creature comforts in a pleasant setting but an almost
magical realm in which one has a surge of self-worth simply by being waited
upon. Indeed all that is attractive in the place itself—its furnishings, its
KATE CHOPIN'S "A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS"
363
plate, glassware, silvenvare, and tablecloth, the very quality of the food—is
testimony to one's worth, grounds for validation of one'sseli^steem. At her
leisure in sumptuous surroundings, Mi"s. Sommers savors her meal, browses
in her magazines, dwells lovingly on her new clothes, and feels at one with
"quiet ladies and gentlemen" who are "lunching at the small tables like her
own." Then, taking her departure, her whole manner making elear to the
waiter that "the price . . . made no difference." she leaves a nice tip,
"whereupon he bowed before her as before a princess of royal blood" (p.
503). As with ihe department store, then, impulse leads to forms of pleasure
and self-esteem both dictated largely by tlie lures of tlie prevailing cousuiner
culture.
Mrs. Sommers's third stop, al the matinee, is perhaps the most
poignant, as it is not merely the last bit of self-indulgence she can afford but
the one that seems to reflect most keenly her longing both to ensconce
herself in a realm of beauty and (o play a part in the theatrics ol self-exhibit
continually generated byconsunierism.'^ Fittingly, given Chopin's porti-ayal
of the powerful tug of consumerism on her, Mrs. Sommers yields to
advertising. Knowing that "there was still money in her purse," she sticcumbs
to the "next temptation," which "presented itself in the shape of a matinee
poster" {p. 503). Once inside tlie theater, Mi"s. Sommers finds hei"self sitting
"between brilliantly dressed women who had gone there to kill time and eat
candy and display tlieir gaudy attire" (pp. 505-504). Chopin notes, as well,
that "there were many others who were there solely for the play and acting."
Mrs. Sommers, tlumgh. fits in neither group: "It is safe to say tJiere was no
one present who bore quite the attitude which Mrs. Sommers did to her
sun oundings. She gathered in the whole—stage and players and people in
one wide impression, and absorbed it and {'njoyed it" (p. 504). Feeling as if
she belongs where she now finds hereelf, she is pleased to be botb observer
of the play and participant in the fashionable spectacle; "she laughed at the
comedy and wept—she and the gaudy woman next to her wept over the
tragedy. And they talked a little togetlier over it." Certainly not the least
fuIFilHng part of the whole afternoon's pleasure is the moment when the
"Again Chopin seems to anticipate Veblen. who poiitts oiii thai "Absicntion from
labour is the conventional e\idence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social
atandinR; and this insistence on the mcritoriousnrss oF wealth leads to a more strenuous
iiisi.stfiice on leisure" (p. 41).
364
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY
"gaudy woman" beside her "wiped her eyes and sniffled on a tiny square of
filmy, perfumed lace and passed little Mrs. Sommers her box of candy" (p.
504).
The play on stage is bo(h tragic and comic; so it would seem is Mrs.
Sommers's whole spree. Desperate to bring sotne autonomy and beatity into
her meager, overburdened existence, she rebels against the conditions
under which she has been laboring; but her rebellion takes the form merely
of blind, iniptilsivc, tntrrly desperate submission to the dictates of a
commercially driven constmier ethic that insists that one's true worth is
determined by tbe quality and worlh of one's posses.siotis and amusements.'^
It is both terribly sad and fainlly comical thai Mrs. Sonnners seems for a time
to believe her gentiine needs satisfied by a few pieces of clothing, a bit of
bought lunch, and some shared teal's and candies witli a vapid lady of
fashion at a matinee. Whether or not Chopin knew her Thoreau, it is
eminently clear that she is implicitly aware of the sort of widespread modern
desperation he lamented and excoriated. It is also unremittingly sad that
Mrs. Sommers's children will go wilhotit some truly needed clothes as a
result of these few hours of impulsiveness. But it is not that Mrs. Sommers
has been irresponsible—tbat is tiot Chopin's point. Wiiat she does convey
is that this woman, trapped at home, is also, whether she is aware of it or
not, ti'apped out in the world.
WTien the curtain comes down on the stage world of illusions, it
comes down, as well, on Mrs. Sommers's afternoon of illusoiy escape.
Chopin comments, "The play was over, the music ceased, the crowd filed
out. It was like a dream ended. People scattered in all directions. Mrs.
Sommers went to the corner and waited for the cable car" (p. 504). The
rhythm of this passage is almost funereal, as if Chopin were sounding a dirge
for her protagonist's dreams. I h e strong caesura-like pauses of the fnst
sentence make each clause in the series seem virtually a part of a measured
and terrible tolling, and that rhythm pereists to the end of the passage. The
scattering people become in tiii.s comext almost the visual equivalent of tiie
'•'Charlotie Perkins Gilman asserted in 1898. in her Womm andErorumirs (NewYork:
Harper and Row. 1966). that "The niodem woman (has been made into a] priestess of the
temple of consumption" (p. 120), one who is "forbidden lo make, but encouraged to lake" (p.
118).
KATE CHOPIN'S "A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS"
365
coming apart of Mrs. Sommers's sense of belonging to some community of
the fashionable. Finally, the cable car ride looming ahead for her seems like
nothing so much now as an inescapable trip to an unavoidable and tigbtly
constraining fate. One might argue, in fact, that, figtiratively speaking, she
has never really been off the cable car and its iron tracks.
Once Mrs. Sonimers is literally back on the car, Chopin shifts the
perspective suddenly to tliat of "a man with keen eyes" who sits across from
her and studies her "small, pale face." Keen as his eyes may be, though, he
is unable "to decipber what be saw there." He sees nothing, insists Chopin,
unless "he were wizard enough to detect a poignant wish, a powerful longing
that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her
forever" (p. 504). Most men, as Chopin has shown in other works, are
anything but wizards in understanding the needs of women in the society of
her day, and unfortunately, as this tale shows, too many women, while
knowing that their lives are iinftilfilling, are unprepared to knowjtist what
to do about their situation, unprepared to see in what direcdons fnlfillnicnt
might lie. As Papke notes acutely, "For Chopin there is never an easy
resolution to wotiian's quest for self and fulfillment of desire" (p. 66); but
she suggests, as well, that those characters in Chopin's work who achieve any
sort of stable, mature selfliood and fulfillment do so "only after questioning
authority, admitting self-will, and accepting self-doubt and continual
self-transformation a.s the basis for existence in an, at-best-amoi-al world" (p.
47). That this process is a lonely and difficult one goes without saying, and
perhaps this is why Chopin makes no reference to a Mr. Sommers. Clearly,
whether he is alive or dead, supportive or abusive, an industrions but
ineffective breadwinner or complacent layabout is of no real significance to
Chopin here. She wants to keep the focus on Mrs. Sommers herself and on
how she confronts the difficulties and dissatisfactions that her marriage has
brought her; she shows that Mrs. Sommers does not undertake tlie arduous
process of self-awareness and self-formation that Papke describes.
"Sometimes," Chopin reveals, "a vision of the future like some dim, gaunt
monster . . . appalled IMrs. Sommers]," as she struggles daily with the
difficulties her married life has thrust upon her, but, Chopin adds ironically,
"luckily to-morrow never comes" {p. 501). Never confronting this "monster,"
Mrs. Sommers never confronts the terms of her existence, and her
long-delayed reaction against it takes the fonn of nothing more than an
afternoon's escapist indulgence in tlie ephemeral pleasures of consumption.
366
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY
So the cable car will stop, of course, and Mrs. Sommers will get off
and return to her dull, endless round of duty, her brief ilhision of autonomy
only heightening her sense of the dreariness of it all." In seeking to escape
tiie burdens imposed by marriage, she cannot ride forever any more than
Chopin's Louise Mallard cotild soar forever free on the wings of her
imagination or Kdna Ponteilier could swim forever out into an endless sea.'^
As Cynthia Grilfin Wolff observes, Chopin's works constitute a "fiction of
limits,""'a body of work constantly reminding us that the world does not as
a rule accommodate itself to personal desire. Mrs. Stjinmers certainly feels
the pinch of the limits in her own life, but the feelings of constraint do not
prod her to meaningful action. Certainlv a little more money might make
for a few more pleasantly escapist afternoons such as this, btit, in fact, Mrs.
Sommers's situation would remain fundamentally the same.
In speaking of another work depicting the terrible power of money
in a consumption-driven culture, W'harton's House of Mirth, Wai-Chee
Diniock cominetits lliat though Lily Hart is "btisy marketing hereelf
throughout most of the book" as a potential bride, she ends up, ironically,
finding no takers and "paying so dearly" for her few efforts at being
something otlier than marriageable merchandise." Mrs. Sommers, too, is on
' 'Papke observes tellingly that Mrs. Sommers's brief sense of freedom has thrown her
•into a despair from which there is no rescue' (p. fiti).
''"Walter Benn Michaels, in a briercommeni on "A Pair of Silk Stockings," asserts that
"Mrs. Somniers's desire toshop forever anticipates by several years Edna's swim into the infinite,
but the spirit of coiisnniption and the attempt to take seriously the responsibilities of
consumplion predominate in botb texts." He adds. "Mrs. Sommers ends up embodyiiiR and
. . . Edna pushes to the limits of embodiment, the responsibility of consuriiption lo motiilize
desire at any cost..." ("The Contracted Heait," Nni> I.iteiwy Itistmy. '1\ [IWOI. ITOl. Michaels's
comment is useful in litiking Mrs. Sommers and Edtia. but if Mi^. .Soinniei-s embodies any
"responsibility of coustimplion.' it is only initially, before she gives up her plan to shop for
family necessities, unless Michaels is suggesting tliat as a product of her society she is intuitively
responding to the dominant societal iiotioii thai hei "responsibilit)'" as a cotisuiner is to try to
satisfy her deepest, most inchoate desires throtigh buying.
"^•"Kate Chopin and tbe Fiction of Limits: 'Desiree'sBaby,'" Sout/t^m IJt^frary Journal,
10 (Spring 1978). t33.
"'Debasitig Exchange: Edith Whanon's HmtseofMirtlt,' PMLA, 100 (October 1985),
783, 787.
KAIT-: CHOPIN'S "A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS'*
367
this one afternoon "marketing" hei^self—not for marriage, obviously, but for
the ajjproval of "the ninhitufte." And, hke Lily, she fails. Her failure resides
not in fier simply being tinable to spend more tlian one afternoon among
I lie fashionable (jusl a.s Lily does not fail simply because she does not win a
wealthy husband) but in her inability or refusal to establish a sustained
examination of the terms of her existence.
Exactly where such a stistained examination might lead Mrs.
Sonmiers is impossible to say. Finding some means of Icaviug the demands
of her "brood" behind seems anything but a viable option, and, as we have
noted, we cannot even be sure thai a Mr. Sonnners is on the scene. Similarly,
launching a career of her own seems for a woman in her situation the stuff
only of dreams. Suffice it to say, though, such an examination might well
lead to awareness, and awareness might lead to the beginnings of autonomy.
Meanwhile, tJiough, her marriage has shaped her existence lo needs not her
own, and, unabie to perceive or confront what a life freely chosen by herself
mighe entail, she has paid dearly for her little afternoon spree. Impulsively
puT"sulng identity, diversion, and distractioti, all offered up by others, she
now must pay the cost in guilt and bewildered longing. Marriage, as Chopin
so often shows here and elsewhere, can bring a woman terrible burdens;
succumbing to the blandishments of consumerism, she also shows so
powerftilly, will not ease tiiose burdens.
368
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERI.Y