When a storm breaks out, it strikes with a sudden climax and fades into oblivion. In The Tempest, a story by Kate Chopin, during a storm an adulterous affair occurs between Calixta, mother of Bibi and wife of Bobinot, and Alcee, husband of Clarisse. A parallel develops between the storm and the emotional storm in a woman's life. This storm breeds a storm for the readers: each character is happy in the end, indicating that adultery has no negative consequences. From the reader's point of view, this storm should have social consequences, but instead it causes a breakdown in the structure. Jacques Derrida, theorist, argues in his story, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, that every structure is arbitrary and is capable of epistemic change. He criticizes the theory that logocentrism is socially constructed and a structure could become restrictive or totalized, or open, allowing free play. The presence of this storm is not accidental: Chopin develops the relationship between the two by using symbolism to illustrate how feelings in a relationship are as unpredictable as a raging storm. Chopin highlights a rupture that impacts the reader's view of the repression of women and how limited a nineteenth-century marriage could be for a woman, both sexually and spiritually. They were considered innocent; always faithful to her husband and her only function was that of wife and mother. In this episteme, women were expected to behave properly and sexual desire was not even taken into consideration. Only as far as men were concerned, women supposedly lacked passion and desire. Men who gave in to the temptation of a woman were considered to be of the lower class. If you could resist this desire, you would be more successful in both the private and public spheres. The Tempest challenges the structure of the sex/gender system in the nineteenth century by presenting a sympathetic character, Calixta, whose actions decenter and undermine patriarchy and socially constructed femininity. The Storm suggests that there is no longer any perspective of transcendental meaning on sex and gender, and that both sex and gender are constructed by the culture of one's society. The story not only illustrates the idea of ​​"passionless" women, and that women do in fact have strong sexual desires, but glorifies them, demonstrating the wide range of freedom to play within the system. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The center of a structure governs the entire structure. According to Derrida, Western philosophy was logocentric: it places at the center a logo that organizes and explains the world for us, while remaining outside of it (Tyson 242). Although a structure may change over time, the center remains the same. Derrida believed that there were different ways to define it and that everything could become “discourse”. A center can lead towards "full presence", or totalization, or towards free play. Totalization means that a structure has a definite definition and any change and transformation of elements within a structure is prohibited. On the other hand, free play is a disruption of presence. This means that the meaning of the words we use every day is always open and never fixed. Derrida believed that within a system there should be flexibility: no matter how adequate the laws are, there will always be another perspective, and that one can never completely escape the “maybe” (Derrida 925).“Coherence of the system, the center of a structure allows the free play of its elements within the total form... the center closesalso the free play that opens up and makes possible” (Derrida 915). In this specific episteme, in late 19th century America, the center of the sex/gender system was patriarchy. Economic and social changes followed the Revolutionary War, which led Americans to rely on the family as a source of social stability. As a result, unique roles were assigned to both men and women (D'Emilio & Freedman 56). The patriarchal model envisaged separate sexual spheres: husbands left the home to seek their fortune in the public sphere, while wives remained in the private sphere performing unpaid domestic and reproductive work (D'Emilio & Freedman 57). Women were perceived very differently in terms of status and nature than men. The distinct perceptions of men and women are called patriarchal binary thinking. Patriarchal binary thinking is a term for polar opposites: we understand each based on their opposition to each other. Derrida concluded that these oppositions also included small hierarchies: each pair had one that was more superior or privileged than the other (Tyson 240). Men were superior to women, both in the public and private spheres. Stereotypical women during this period were seen as passive, domestic, and dependent on men. On the other hand, men were dominant, controlling and independent. Women were not allowed to own property and were perceived as the property of men, first by her father and then by her husband. As demonstrated in the text, Calixta goes about her normal "feminine" duties, unaware of an approaching storm. “She would sit at a side window sewing furiously on a sewing machine. She was very busy and did not notice the storm approaching. But he felt very hot and often stopped to wipe his face as the sweat collected in drops” (Chopin 558). While Calixta doesn't appear to be unhappy in her role, this shows that the role was starting to wear on her. She was distracted as she conformed to the 19th century gender roles constructed for her. Nothing is “natural,” not even sexual identity. Society has this idea of ​​biological essentialism, which indicates that there is an innate inferiority of women based on biological differences between the sexes that are considered part of our immutable essence as men and women. However, Judith Butler, an American philosopher and gender theorist, argued that gender is socially constructed: women are not born feminine and men are not born masculine. Rather, these gender “categories” are constructed by one's society (Tyson 82). This indicates that it is possible that there is a difference between “sex” as the anatomical difference between the male and female body, and “gender” as the meaning attributed to bodily differences, also known as gender identity. Judith Butler, in her story Gender Trouble, illustrates how the culture of one's society is centered on the idea of ​​recognizing the body as a rigorous binary opposition between male and female according to which one is "naturally male" or "naturally female": The little boy learns that his crying is not male; he must grow in his masculinity by imitating behavior designated as “male” to the point that such behavior becomes “second nature.” The child learns that certain ways of acting make her a tomboy, and she is encouraged to dress the part of femininity. (Butler 2486) This quote demonstrates the idea of ​​a patriarchal center, and if one does not fit into a category, an extreme amount of pressure would consume their lives The idea of ​​rigid binary oppositions which is what dominates one's political life and social. Butler believed that categories should be loosened, relaxing on the fixation of gender identity. Asby doing so, we would be participating in Derrida's concept of free play within the system. We would like to “destabilize naturalized categories of identity and desire” – not to obey imposed morality, but to be responsible and construct our own vision of sex and gender within society (Butler 2487). The Storm illustrates gender conformity when Bibi and Bobinot are in town to buy shrimp during the storm. When the store began to rumble, Bibi was trying to act strong and tell her father that she wasn't afraid. Today it is normal for a four-year-old to be afraid when a storm approaches, Bibi conformed to the gender categories set for him at that time due to his biological sex. The Tempest illustrates a segregation of wealth between Calixta and Alcee. They could not marry because they belonged to two different racial classes, which is why Calixta married Bobinot. This was a marriage of convenience because women were told to accept what was offered to them. In public and private life, women were subservient to their husbands. Women had no chance to go and look for something better, as their only aim was to please their husband. Within a marriage, the sole purpose of sexual encounters was reproduction. Couples were able to achieve sexual harmony and for others it only caused stress because of the different meanings it had for both of them. Some husbands and wives even slept in separate beds so as not to give in to temptation. Giving in to one's lust was “unnatural” and if men had intercourse with women they would be robbed of their physical power (D'Emilio & Freedman 69). The economic success of a couple determines the success of a marriage compared to a romantic one. Furthermore, there was a difference between the upper class and the working class. There was the idea of ​​the self-made man: gentlemen had to control their sexual appetites to be successful. If you were from the upper class, that meant you had to train yourself to channel your desires, because both masturbation and intercourse could destroy both body and mind. gain, a demonstration of how the sex/gender system centered the patriarchal model. Chopin illustrates how Alcee, an upper-class male, could not control his sexual desires. Exemplified in The Storm, Alcee began to have a bigger problem with looking at how morality affects him personally, not how it affects society: his lips were red and wet like pomegranate seeds. Her white neck and the sight of her full, firm breasts disturbed him greatly. As she looked at him, the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given way to a sleepy gleam that unconsciously betrayed sensual desire. He looked into her eyes and couldn't help but embrace her lips in a kiss. (Chopin 559) Since Alcee was from the upper class, he was praised for holding back his sexual desire, as this would make him even more successful in life. Yet, he gave in to temptation and felt like he had “no choice.” At the time, everyone was taught that a woman had to please her husband: sex was right at the top of the list of tasks, like washing dishes and having children. This storm not only destroys the characters' belongings, but also destroys the trust and faith on which marriages are based, causing a breakdown in the structure. This quote decenters the naturalized masculine/patriarchal model in which men hold all the power, but also undermines the constructed femininity held by society by realizing that women can have desires just like men. Women were seen as men's property: if harmed, they would have no morevalue. If a woman had sexual relations with someone other than her husband, it would cause her value to decrease. Because women in the nineteenth century had to depend on men for stability, they chose not to engage in such acts. As a result, women were said to be passionless. Some of these women believed that because men had to control their sexual appetite and did not have to engage in it, this made them more equal to them. However, equality was not maintained. The only passion that women believed they felt was the love for their home, for their children and for the domestic duties they had. A woman's lust must lie dormant, only to be awakened, perhaps, by her husband (D'Emilio & Freedman 70). As demonstrated by Nancy Cott in Passionless, “If women were to behave modestly and sexually passively, and even act without affectation, then, logically, they should be passionless.”(Cott 226). This affects how people thought about women based on how they behaved, based on how they conformed to their gender categories. The Storm does not place emphasis on the adultery committed between Calixta and Alcee as a crime, but rather on the connection between the two. Chopin strives to emphasize what happens to women – and men – when the sex/gender system marginalizes them by misrepresenting and misunderstanding women as passionless. Just as the storm takes both characters by surprise, the emotional storm of sexual fulfillment takes Calixta by surprise. Once overcome, he realizes this excitement, this orgasm as it happened. She states that she feels discomfort that causes her collar to loosen, which may indicate that she is talking about the sensation caused by climax, as well as discomfort from her married life. Calixta and Bobinot are imagined to have a sexual relationship only for the purpose of procreation, or if not for procreation, within social norms. At the beginning of the story it is stated that Bobinot is childish, thus allowing us to assume that Bobinot is not a skilled lover. Anne Koedt, author of The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, said that “What we need to do is refine our sexuality. We must abandon 'normal' concepts of sex and create new guidelines that take into account mutual sexual enjoyment” (Koedt 1). This means that women should be able to feel passion and desire and enjoy the same fulfillment as men. When Calixta is with Alcee, sex and desire come together: instead of having sex for procreation, they have sex in a more interesting way, stimulating her clitoris. Chopin refers to the end of the storm and the end of the climax: “They paid no attention to the crashing streams, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms” (Chopin 559). By describing the storm during the relationship, Chopin symbolizes that their passion is equal to the intensity of the storm. There is irony in this part of the story because Chopin keeps reminding the reader that the storm is scary and destructive, but eventually that fear ends up disappearing and is completely replaced by desire. Bibi and Bobinot arrive home with the shrimp, and Calixta immediately returns to her gender-categorized tasks. The storm had passed and everyone was happy. The ending excites the reader because there is no moral righteousness of any kind, leaving us without any moral markers. The reader, based on a center, believes that someone must be punished and wonders how everyone is happy. However, Chopin proves that this does not have to be the case. There is no longer any natural, correct and transcendentally meaningful perspective on sex and gender. We must rather take charge of our lives, since we are in the position of.