The author I chose to write about was Kate Chopin. Her writings really stood out as being interesting, vivid, and detail-oriented. I read two stories she authored, “lilacs” and “A pair of silk stockings”. Lilacs, is about a girl named Adrienne. She is friends with a group of nuns in the convent where she used to live. She goes back every year to visit the nuns. It is called “lilacs” because the smell of lilacs makes her think of her past. She doesn’t want to remember the memories of her past because she experiences the smell of lilacs after she left the convent. Which means that smell made her think back on all her old memories that she didn’t like.It doesn’t really say why she left the convent, but it must have been something personal that she couldn’t handle. This story has some Romanticism, it explains to the reader how a certain smell can remind someone of their past, specifically the lilacs. She tells us of their beauty and fresh scent that she could never forget. “A pair of silk stockings” didn’t show any romanticism at all. It was about a lady who is poor, she finds fifteen dollars and spends a day treating herself to a luxury she never had before in her life . These two writings we can consider American Realism because they both focus their stories on a certain person. Many readers can relate their lives to things that happen in these stories for example in lilacs the smell that reminds her of something there are many smells that remind me of a certain thing or even something that happened in my life.
Many people change or can change over a short period of time. In both of these stories it shows that change is present. In “lilacs” Adrienne changes by living a completely different life, and in “a pair of silk stockings” Mrs. Sommers changes when she has hold of the fifteen dollars her mindset changes as a person with a lot of money would act. The authors worldview it based on change. I think she feels that people can’t go through life without some sort of change occuring. She is right it just couldn’t be possible for someone to stay the same their whole entire life. I think Chopin is writing for anyone’s enjoyment. Her writings have more of a sensitive and personal side to them. Probably most women would like her stories rather than men, women can relate to more of the things going on in the stories for some reason.
I love how Chopin gives a lot of examples to get her point across to her readers. Also she is very imaginative and creative with her writings. I can create a picture in my head of the story as I was reading along. What drew me to this author was when I started reading “A pair of silk stockings” it was very interesting I couldn’t stop reading it, and I liked how her writing wasn’t boring and gave a lot of detail that kept my attention. “I believe you are right, Adrienne. For now that you speak of it, I can feel how the odor of fresh bread-when Sister Jeasnne bakes-always makes me think of the great kitchen of ma tante de Sierge, and crippled Julie, who sat always knitting at the sunny window. And I never smell the sweet scented honeysuckle without living again through the blessed day of my first communion.” This passage is from “Lilacs” its a conversation between Adrienne and Sister Agathe. Sister Agathe is telling Adrienne that she is right about how a certain scent reminds people of their past or of special times that occurred in their lives. This passage stuck out to me because like I said at the beginning of this paragraph Chopin uses a lot of examples to get her point across to her readers, and this is a perfect example. She makes sure us as the readers know what she is talking about and understand exactly what she means.