Summary
Bobinôt and Bibi, a father and his four-year-old son, see the somber grey clouds and the stillness of the leaves on the trees, and agree that it looks like it's about to rain. They're currently at Friedheimer's store, and take a seat on two empty kegs to wait out the storm.
The two converse with each other as if they're both adults. Bibi expresses some concern for his mother, Calixta, saying she's probably afraid of the storm, and Bobinôt retorts that hopefully Sylvie is around to help her out. But Sylvie helped her yesterday, Bibi replies. As they wait, Bobinôt buys a can of shrimps for Calixta, as it's one of her favorite foods.
At home, Calixta is sitting at her sewing machine, hard at work, and doesn't even notice the brewing storm. She's sweating from the heat, but doesn't notice that something is amiss until the sky suddenly grows dark. In a hurry, Calixta goes around the house shutting the windows and doors to keep the rain out. She then realizes that she's left Bobinôt's Sunday clothes out to dry on the laundry line.
When she goes outside to retrieve them, she sees that Alcée Laballière has ridden through the gate of her property. Calixta hasn't see Alcée much since her marriage, and this is the first time that she had seen him alone. Just as the rain begins to fall, Alcée rides his horse under the awning of the house, where the chickens are huddled.
Alcée asks Calixta's permission to stand on her porch to wait out the rain, and Calixta agrees to let him. The sounds of their voices in conversation startles Calixta and takes her out of a trance. As she's grabbing Bobniôt's clothing, Alcée grabs trousers and a jacket of Bibi's that might blow away in a gust of wind.
Initially, Alcée expresses an intention to stay outside while the storm passes, but the rain is getting so heavy that the shelter of the porch wouldn't keep him particularly dry. Calixta invites him inside, and they quickly realize that it's storming so bad that they'll need to put something under the front door to keep the rain from getting in through that gap. They find something to plug the gap with and Calixta exclaims that they haven't had rain this bad in two years.
Alcée can't help but take notice of Calixta's looks. She has a fuller figure than she did before she was married, but her blue eyes are still plenty full of life and her blonder hair, a little wet from the rain and disheveled from the heat, is gathered around her ears and temples.
Analysis
The opening sentence of the story goes, "The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain," setting a somewhat mystical tone for the story. The evocation of still leaves describes the calm before the storm, but the image is a bit unsettling, as if time itself had frozen in this moment, and even the swaying of the leaves stopped with it. It's a beguiling image to open with, yet not a violent one. The storm that this image seems to foreshadow may not be so destructive, but it certainly will be a strange one.
It's also key that this story opens with Bobinôt and Bibi, who will not be the focus of the rest of the narrative. These are our main character Calixta's husband and son respectively, and opening with them gives us a concrete sense of Calixta's family life. This is important, as the temptation that Calixta will soon confront is only meaningful in the context of the family against which it is posed. But seeing Bobinôt and Bibi stranded at Friedheimer's store also sets up a situation wherein Calixta and Alcée can enjoy some alone time.
And we know early on that there's something going on between Calixta and Alcée. The line about Calixta being stirred from some trance when she hears Alcée's voice shows that he has some significance in her life, and the way that Alcée looks at Calixta's body, eyes, and hair suggest that he, at the very least, was attracted to her before her marriage. It's clear that they haven't really seen each other in about five years, but that they certainly have some sort of history. It's worth noting, given the later events in the story, that Bibi is four years old.
If you want to understand a bit more of the nature of Calixta's and Alcée's relationship, you'll have to go back to the story that this one is a sequel to, "At the 'Cadian Ball." In that story, learn that Alcée and his eventual wife Clarisse are wealthy members of the Creole class, and that Calixta and her current husband Bobinôt are Acadians from Nova Scotia. In that earlier story, though, everyone is single, and a complex courting dynamic plays out, where Calixta and Alcée feel a siginificant connection, but Calixta ultimately decides to settle for Bobinôt when Alcée gives into to social expectations and chooses to pursue Clarisse, a member of his own class. Given all of this, we know that the history between Calixta and Alcée is not only personal; it also involves complex class dynamics and social norms.
Chopin, of course, loved skewering such societal norms and expectations, both as a writer and in her own life. She was known as a powerful, single woman who lived on her own in St. Louis after her husband's death, enjoying social outings (which were not customary for a woman to undertake alone) and being rumored to be involved in a series of affairs. Her literature concerned women who followed their desires and needs instead of the course prescribed by society, with the best known example of this being her novel The Awakening, which so threatened established gender roles at the time that it was widely panned and more or less forgotten for decades.
