This mainly reminded me that I'm not always good with short stories. They end too quickly and I often feel confused by them. It was somewhat true here, though I enjoyed many of the short sketches more than I expected.

This is the collection of stories whose publication was cancelled following the notoriety of Chopin’s book ‘The Awakening’. She would tragically die just a few years later.

Chopin’s story is interesting; she grew up in St. Louis which was a slave city in a slave state during the Civil War (which broke out when she was 11), and after the Union victory at Vicksburg, she watched Yankee soldiers invade her family’s home and force her mother to hoist the Union flag at bayonet point. She married Oscar Chopin from Louisiana, and cranked out 6 kids by him in New Orleans, but was not conventional, “lifting her skirts too high when she crossed the village’s one street, displaying her ankles; she smoked Cuban cigarettes – something no lady did”, as well as playing cards and being a self-described “euchre fiend”. She returned to St. Louis after his death (and a fling with a neighboring planter), and began to write stories which were both retrospective of the life and culture in the South, but also highly progressive in their content and strong female characters. She was active in literary circles, drew inspiration from French author Guy de Maupassant (whose stories were far from ‘Midwestern’), and had some of her stories published in Vogue, a progressive new magazine in the 1890s.

It’s really a shame that ‘The Awakening’ got such hostile and damning reviews; I think Chopin was a great writer who pushed boundaries not just for women but for literature, and did so with that gentile voice from the past. Here is how she describes a horse’s view after being left tied to a tree in Ti Demon (A Horse Story): “He could fancy nothing more uninteresting than to be fastened thus to a tree in the heart of the pine forest. He already began to grow hungry in anticipation of the hunger which would assail him later. He had no means of knowing what hour Herminia would return and release him from his sad predicament.” I find it simple, and yet pretty.

There is a quite a range in this collection and solid consistency, but my favorites were:

A Vocation and a Voice – featuring the existential wandering of a young boy who falls in love during his vagabond wanderings with a fortune teller and her abusive partner, and has her voice etched indelibly on his soul.

An Idle Fellow – in two short pages, Chopin expresses communion and respect for those who focus on nature and people, as opposed to burying their heads in books.

An Egyptian Cigarette – a little drug trip from one of those “funny kinda cigarettes”.

The Story of an Hour – so honest in the reaction to news of her husband’s death that I’m sure it was scandalous, but with a plot twist at the end.

Two Summers and Two Souls – love that is ill-timed, and which may grow or shrink in people upon separation.

The Night Came Slowly – my favorite of all. Also two short pages, and brilliant. A little surprising at the strength of the rejection of people in favor of solitude in nature. See the quote below.

Her Letters – also brilliant. A wife treasures letters from an old lover, thinks of burning all of them but decides to continue hiding them from her husband, keeping them in a bundle instructing him to destroy them without reading them if she dies first. She does die first, and he finds them. What will he do? How will he feel?

The Falling in Love of Fedora – self-explanatory, but with a surprise girl on girl “long, penetrating kiss upon her mouth” ending.

Quotes:
On love from the past, and remembrance, from “Her Letters”, easily my favorite passage:
“She calmly selected a letter at random from the pile and cast it into the roaring fire. A second one followed almost as calmly, with the third her hand began to tremble; when, in a sudden paroxysm she cast a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth into the flames in breathless succession.
Then she stopped and began to pant – for she was far from strong, and she stayed staring into the fire with pained and savage eyes. Oh, what had she done! What had she not done! With feverish apprehension she began to search among the letters before her. Which of them had she so ruthlessly, so cruelly put out of her existence? Heaven grant, not the first, that very first one, written before they had learned, or dared to say to each other ‘I love you.’ No, no; there it was, safe enough. She laughed with pleasure, and held it to her lips. But what if that other most precious and most imprudent one were missing! in which every word of untempered passion had long ago eaten its way into her brain; and which stirred her still to-day, as it had done a hundred times before when she thought of it. She crushed it between her palms when she found it. She kissed it again and again.
…
What unbounded thankfulness she felt at not having destroyed them all! How desolate and empty would have been her remaining days without them; with only her thoughts, illusive thoughts that she could not hold in her hands and press, as she did these, to her cheeks and her heart.
This man had changed the water in her veins to wine, whose taste had brought delirium to both of them. It was all one and past now, save for these letters that she held encircled in her arms.
…
It was not sealed; only a bit of string held the wrapper, which she could remove and replace at will whenever the humor came to her to pass an hour in some intoxicating dream of the days when she felt she had lived.”

On nature, from ‘A Vocation and a Voice’; I loved the description of the wind:
“He stayed there a very long time, seated on the bench, quite still, blinking his eyes at the rippling water which sparkled in the rays of the setting sun. Contentment was penetrating him at every pore. His eyes gathered all the light of the waning day and the russet splendor of the Autumn foliage. The soft wind caressed him with a thousand wanton touches, and the scent of the earth and the trees – damp, aromatic, - came pleasantly to him mingled with the faint odor of distant burning leaves. The blue-gray smoke from a smoldering pile of leaves rolled in lazy billows among the birches on a far slope.
How good it was to be out in the open air. He would have liked to stay there always…”

On solitude, from ‘The Night Came Slowly’. The entire story is only a couple paragraphs longer than this:
“I am losing my interest in human beings; in the significance of their lives and their actions. Some one has said it is better to study one man than ten books. I want neither books nor men; they make me suffer. Can one of them talk to me like the night – the Summer night? Like the stars or the caressing wind?
…
Why do fools cumber the Earth! It was a man’s voice that broke the necromancer’s spell. A man came to-day with his ‘Bible Class.’ He is detestable with his red cheeks and bold eyes and coarse manner and speech. What does he know of Christ? Shall I ask a young fool who was born yesterday and will die tomorrow to tell me things of Christ? I would rather ask the stars: they have seen him.” ( )