“If this keeps up, Dieu sait if the levees goin' to stan it!”
As she begins to grasp the severity of the storm, Calixta worries aloud if the levee will be able to tolerate the force of the storm's deluge. In Louisiana, a levee system protects New Orleans and other cities from flooding. Alcée responds by asking, sardonically, why Calixta would worry about the levees. The exchange acts as a double entendre. The levees restrain water, and all sorts of trouble can come if they break. Similarly, Calixta and Alcée share a sexual tension that could have unforeseen consequences if its force grows too strong and breaks through the social and moral barriers that restrain it.
"A bolt struck a tall chinaberry tree at the edge of the field. It filled all visible space with a blinding glare and the crash seemed to invade the very boards they stood upon."
Here, the lightning bolt—a sign of the storm's power—strikes a tree and consumes all "visible space" around it. As the storm in this story is supposed to be an allegory for the forbidden passions that Calixta and Alcée share, the intensification of this storm suggests an intensification of the sexual tension. Just as the glare of the lightning is all-consuming, so is the temptation between these two characters.
“Do you remember—in Assumption, Calixta?”
Alcée recalls a moment in their former love affair, when he and Calixta succumbed to their passions in the town of Assumption. "Assumption" here carries a double meaning, as it both represents the geographical location of a particularly torrid moment, as well as Alcée's assumption that Calixta will be as interested in reprising that love affair as he is.
"Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world."
At once a sensuous image and an allusion to Calixta's femininity, this quote stands as a key example of Chopin placing female sexuality front and center. By mentioning the "creamy lily," Chopin evokes Calixta's fertility, mentioning the flower's perfume and life-giving quality. What's key about this description is that it doesn't serve to make Calixta a sex object or to titillate a reader, but to provide a meditation on the female being, body, and experience in a moment of passion.
"The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening green world into a palace of gems."
When the storm ends, the landscape is imparted with a magical quality, as summed up in the metaphor of "a palace of gems." While earlier in the story the storm seems to portend disaster—threatening Bobinôt and Bibi, the house, or even Calixta's and Alcée's normal lives—the storm has left things all the better once it passes. And as the storm has passed, so has the reprisal of the love affair, and all is apparently quite well after that, too.
"Bobinôt and Bibi began to relax and enjoy themselves, and when the three seated themselves at table they laughed much and so loud that anyone might have heard them as far away as Laballière's."
Chopin shows us Calixta's family life to be perfectly sound after the storm and the encounter with Alcée have passed, but reminds us just how risky such an affair was. "Laballière's" refers to Alcée's home, and we know that this was a risky endeavor undertaken in a small town between close neighbors. Only the protection of a terrible storm could create a context in which the two lovers could explore their desires.
"So the storm passed and everyone was happy."
The final line of this story strikes the opposite of the moralistic tone that we might expect from a 19th-century story about infidelity. It speaks to Chopin's distinctly modern views on love and sex, which center human need and desire over societal mores. Calixta and Alcée share their affair with no repercussions whatsoever, and their family lives go on as happily as they had been before. Chopin would have likely met ever further controversy publishing a story with such a message in her lifetime, so, perhaps luckily for her, it was only published posthumously.
