"A Pair of Silk Stockings" – a classic short story by Kate Chopin

An 1897 story by a wonderful writer who was nearly lost to literary history

Today’s Literary Ladies Lite Sunday edition presents the full text of “A Pair of Silk Stockings,” a short story by Kate Chopin (1850–1904) first published in an 1897 issue of Vogue magazine.

Chopin was a wonderful Southern writer whose 1899 novella, The Awakening, was so controversial (imagine, a woman with dreams and desires!) that it virtually destroyed her literary reputation. Fortunately. her body of work was rediscovered in the late 1960s and has been a staple of America literature since.

Kate Chopin enjoyed contributing to Vogue because she believed that the magazine was uncharacteristically “fearless and truthful" in its portrayals of women’s lives of that era. Chopin's writing style may have been gentle on the surface, but it fearlessly probed the unrealistic expectations and Victorian attitudes that held women down.

The story follows Mrs. Sommers, a young mother, who spends an unexpected windfall of fifteen dollars on herself, rather than on her children as she had originally planned. “A Pair of Silk Stockings” has been reprinted in several collections of Kate Chopin's short works. It is now in the public domain.

Plot summary

Mrs. Sommers comes into a small fortune of fifteen dollars (worth about $500 today, though don't hold me to that). After considering what to do with the money, she decides to use it to purchase clothing for her children so they may look “fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives.”

The story hints that Mrs. Sommers had been wealthy before her marriage, but is no longer; now, her “needs of the present absorbed her every faculty.” She begins her shopping trip with good intentions, but a beautiful pair of of silk stockings at a store counter quickly derails them. Her plan to buy clothing for her children goes out the window and instead, she embarks on a spending spree on herself.

To go with her new stockings, she buys a pair of boots and kid gloves. She peruses costly magazines while treating herself to at a an expensive restaurant. She attends a theater matinee and shares chocolates with another attendee.Returning home on a cable car, she is seized by “a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever.”

Describing Mrs. Sommers as “little,” Kate Chopin is describing not just her physical stature. Mrs. Sommers community is aware of what her social standing had been before her marriage; it's evident that her marriage has reduced her status. Mrs. Sommers is able to maintain her selflessness only until she comes upon the stockings. The beautiful stockings are simply too much temptation, and she gives in to the “mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility.”

Chopin critic and biographer Barbara Ewell (author of Kate Chopin, 1986) called the story “a small masterpiece” and that “the power of money to enhance self-esteem and confidence is the core of the narrative.” Well, that’s an academic view … I read it as a tale of how, for women who always put the needs of others first, a taste of self-care can snowball into self-indulgence. But who can blame them?

“A Pair of Silk Stockings” by Kate Chopin

Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie gave her a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years.

The question of investment was one that occupied her greatly. For a day or two she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really absorbed in speculation and calculation. She did not wish to act hastily, to do anything she might afterward regret. But it was during the still hours of the night when she lay awake revolving plans in her mind that she seemed to see her way clearly toward a proper and judicious use of the money.