Chopin Journal 1

By Jessica Granse

March 5, 2009

"Her white neck and a glimpse of her full, firm bosom disturbed him powerfully," (533).

When Chopin is describing the sexually driven scene between Calixta and her lover, Alcee, in section II of "The Storm", you notice her description of Calixta also accents the paleness of the skin on her neck. I also noticed that in the beginning of "The Awakening", in chapter IV, she gives this same attribute to Adele Ratignolle when describing her as being unbelievably beautiful.

Chopin is famous for her revolutionary ideas towards feminism and her openness about female sexuality in a time where sex was viewed as a chore for women in order to please their man. It was not believed that they enjoyed it. Wikipedia attributes her strong ideas about feminism to her upbringing by strong women. Her ideas are really different from others at that time because the women she writes about have these sexual wants and needs that aren’t fulfilled within their marriage, which leads them to find these needs filled elsewhere. Although she pushes the envelope with this idea of sexual desire in women, she also keeps to a norm of how women should look. When describing the characters that are to be seen as beautiful, she sticks to certain similar characteristics. The three similarities I saw were the white neck, blue eyes, and really red lips in both Calixta of "The Storm" on page 533 and Madame Ratignolle in "The Awakening" on page 540. The description of Ratignolle is obviously over-the-top in the description of her beauty. She says that her husband would be a brute to not appreciate her and all men find her beautiful. She makes it really understandable that this character is to be found as absolutely gorgeous. Then, in "The Storm", during the scene between Calixta and Alcee, she’s describing Alcee’s desire for her and she mentions these three characteristics in her as well. By mentioning this when discussing the sexual desire between them, it emphasizes that these are things that are found sexy in her to Alcee. Back then, there wasn’t sexy, there was only "beautiful". I find it very interesting that although Chopin is presenting this brand new view of women’s sexuality, she uses really traditionally looked for physical traits in these women. In psychology class in high school, we studied the fact that there is basically a "universal beauty". This is a template for what everyone finds beautiful in a man or woman. In "Studies in the Psychology of Sex" by Havelock Ellis, which can be found on google books, he also presents these three characteristics as something that’s very consistent in what one sees as beautiful. On pages 97 and 98, he concentrates on these ideas and presents examples from different cultures that proves this true. This is how we are able to attribute this to psychological aspects of ourselves, rather than cultural. This seems like the main difference between Chopin’s ideas about society’s views on women sexuality and how she describes her characters to make them beautiful. This beauty isn’t simply a societal view, it’s a psychological trait we all seem to have, while the views on women’s sexuality is just the societal view. She changes what could be changed: the simple societal view. Another thing that shows this is the fact that even now the societal view is changed, but the valued traits remain the same. Women are able to be seen as sexual characters, but a lot of the time many women that are seen as beautiful on tv and in magazines are often, not always, but often ones with red lips, blue or light eyes, and white skin. They’re often skinny too, but that’s a whole other discussion.