MASTERCLASS

How can you use misunderstandings in communication to create tension in your storylines? Helen Walters looks at the potential to be found in gaps in communication via a short story by Kate Chopin

Helen Walters Kate Chopin

‘A Point At Issue!’ by Kate Chopin is a story about a marriage – between Eleanor and Charles – and so it is fitting that it opens with a wedding announcement. The announcement is shown as it would have appeared in the local newspaper, along with a description of its typeface and its placing between prosaic advertisements. The unusualness of the announcement, low key and after the fact, signals the unusualness of the relationship between the two members of the couple, and therefore gives the reader an idea of what to expect from the rest of the story. As always, you’ll get the most out of this masterclass if you read the story first.

The story was written in 1889 and the marriage depicted is ahead of its time. Throughout the story, the unusual relationship between Eleanor and Charles is examined using a narrative style that allows readers to see the relationship from both sides, and also from the point of view of others outside the relationship with some authorial asides added into the mix for good measure. The narrative style is such that whilst certain things are revealed to the reader, others are hidden and, as with a real marriage, no outsider can ever know exactly what is going on.

At a time when women’s suffrage was in its early stages, Eleanor is presented as a much more independent woman than most at the time. She considers herself to have gone against the public expectations of what she refers to as ‘Plymdaledum’, (Plymdale being the US town where her husband holds a Maths professorship at the local University) which stands for the social norms of the time and place in which the couple find themselves. The story starts with Eleanor’s appraisal of herself and her feelings about her marriage, and then the narrative baton is passed to Charles, who muses on his wife and the ways in which she has surpassed his ideal of womanhood. He considers her approvingly to be logical, broadminded and unmarred by self-consciousness. Notice that, although we are told she follows where he leads, when it comes to the idea of marriage she is well ahead of him. It seems that the balance of power in the relationship may not be quite as Charles supposes. Indeed, throughout the story, the pendulum of power swings backwards and forwards between them.