A Shameful Affair by Kate Chopin, 1893
The magic trick:
A story that doesn’t judge but instead tells the story of a judgment
Mildred is young, bored, and anxious for love. That last characteristic is the problem. Women of her standing (educated) were not to be messing about with the hired help in this time and setting.
Interestingly, the story doesn’t judge her actions. If anything, the plot treats her choices with respect, even comedy. She’s presented as an innocent, perhaps overly serious young woman. It’s her who is so brutally hard on herself. It’s the society she lives in that causes her to feel so much shame. So, by not participating in the judgement, the story itself makes a subtle critique of the social structure.
And that’s quite a trick on Chopin’s part.
The selection:
She could have cried for vexation. Snubbed by a farmhand! a tramp, perhaps. She, Mildred Orme, who ought really to have been with the rest of the family at Narragansett—who had come to seek in this retired spot the repose that would enable her to follow exalted lines of thought. She marveled at the problematic nature of farmhands.
After sending her the uncivil message already recorded, and as he passed beneath the porch where she sat, he did look at her finally, in a way to make her positively gasp at the sudden effrontery of the man.
But the inexplicable look stayed with her. She could not banish it.
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