A Pair of Silk Stockings

Mrs. Sommers is the protagonist of “A Pair of Silk Stockings” and the story follows closely her experiences through the course of a day. The third person narrative voice most often concentrates on describing her actions and experiences in the moment but avoids an internal monologue style. This means that the reader learns about Mrs. Sommers as the story unfolds and must glean information about her, rather like an onlooker might do in life. In this way, the character of Mrs. Sommers grows as the reader understands more about her through accumulated information. Simultaneously, her character develops in response to the action of the story as she becomes more confident and more in touch with herself as an individual. These choices are essential to Chopin’s exploration of identity and self-expression and carry the reader with Mrs. Sommers as she progresses through the narrative: The reader learns about her as she learns (or remembers) what it is to be herself.

It is significant that Chopin does not give us a description of Mrs. Sommers physical appearance, other than calling her “little.” As the story unfolds, isolated descriptions of body parts—her hand, her foot—are given, but the reader must picture Mrs. Sommers for themselves. When aspects of her are physically described, they are in relation to how she sees herself rather than the onlooker. This lack of physical description means that Mrs. Sommers’s character is created out of her thoughts, experiences, and feelings, rather than heavily influenced by a defined appearance. It is notable that Chopin drops the convention in literary realism of giving a physical description. The effect is a repudiation of the idea that appearance is paramount—especially for women—and a freeing of Mrs. Sommer from external judgement in this way.

The fact that Mrs. Sommers’s first name is never used also supports the idea that she is not supposed to have a personal identity; her society dictates that her only identity should rely on her status as a married woman and a mother. To reveal her first name would be to individualize and humanize her in a way that Victorian society often did not when it came to wives and mothers. Women were supposed to be the “angels in the house,” nearer the divine in their devotion to family and erasure of selfish desire. Chopin’s omission of Mrs. Sommers’s personal name explores these ideas of identity, duty, and women’s role in society. It also has the effect of maintaining a sense of distance between the reader and the character—we (and/or the narrator) are not on first name terms. This deliberate sense of unknowingness challenges the reader’s ostensible right to judge Mrs. Sommers.

Mrs. Sommers was once accustomed to a life of some luxury, marriage, and motherhood changed all that until her unexpected financial gain translates into one leisurely day such as she had been used to when she was younger. She is developed, primarily, through indirect characterization: That is, the narrator does not name her qualities, but one can discern how typically dutiful she is by the way she plans to spend her money and how deprived of agency and freedom she feels by the way she ultimately disposes of it. It is also made clear at the beginning of the story that she is not only a dutiful but a fond mother. The children who are named have pet names, and it is obvious how much care and attention she usually pays to raising her family. Her immediate impulse is to spend all of her money on her children, which shows that they are her priority. The idea of this brings her pleasure and excitement. This background to the action of the story is important because it shows that Mrs. Sommers’s actions in the town are a one-off and framed against a pattern of self-sacrifice. It also heightens the tension of the story’s moral dilemma: The reader empathizes with the position but also knows how much more wisely the money could be used.

In many ways, Chopin creates Mrs. Sommers as an “everywoman.” She is a middle-class housewife, and the gaps in detailed knowledge about her—her marital circumstances, income, first name, and appearance—allow room for conjecture, and for the reader to place details familiar to themselves in the gaps. This increases the empathetic nature of the story, as does the lack of any judgmental tone on the part of the narrator, and the lack of complex, internal motivations. While the narrator describes Mrs. Sommers’s impressions, the voice never breaks inside her mind and thoughts. In this way, Chopin’s story is less interested in whether Mrs. Sommers specifically has or has not behaved well and more interested in the nature of the moral dilemma itself. She seems to ask her audience to put themselves in the place of Mrs. Sommer and explore deeply and honestly how they might react.