A Pair of Silk Stockings

Options for middle-class Victorian mothers were few, and the actions of Mrs. Sommers certainly exemplify the conflict between the rigors of doing one’s duty as a mother and the temptations associated with the desire for freedom. Marriage and children were expected, as was a wife and mother’s devotion to her family. Although Mr. Sommers’s whereabouts are never revealed, it is obvious that all responsibility for the domestic sphere falls to his wife. Chopin’s omission of the husband in fact points out how alone­, and perhaps unappreciated, Mrs. Sommers is in her efforts, whether or not her husband is living. Though her neighbors remember the relative affluence she enjoyed prior to her marriage, Mrs. Sommers “herself indulge[s] in no such morbid retrospection” (4) because her family’s present needs require all her efforts. At times, however, she worries about the penniless fate that could await her and her brood, and it seems to her like a “gaunt monster” at the door (4). Her duties consume her, and she has no thought for her own needs or desires.

In her duty to care for her children to the very best of her ability, Mrs. Sommers has learned to neglect her own needs and to fill her time with the tasks of mothering.