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Calixta is a woman who has, by the time the events of “The Storm” take place, put to rest a slightly salacious reputation. The daughter of a Cuban mother and an Anglo-French father, Calixta had been a town belle who attracted gossip for her proud, flirtatious nature. Yet her confident demeanor apparently masked some insecurity that drove her to accept Bobinôt’s offers of marriage. Readers may be surprised to see that, having married Bobinôt out of some combination of despair and spite, Calixta seems to be a content wife as “The Storm” opens. However, the events of the story reveal that, lying dormant beneath an accepting and dutiful demeanor, the passion that Alcée called forth five or so years earlier has been neither quenched nor satisfied.
Readers see hints of this unsatisfied passion in descriptions of Calixta’s state of mind before the storm strikes. She is busy with chores, sewing so “furiously” and so overheated that she undoes the collar of her dress. She rushes from one task to the next and is already in an unsettled state when Alcée rides up to seek shelter. The heat, in the house and in Calixta’s mood, continues to build as she tries to distract herself from Alcée’s presence by doing even more chores, and by the time he embraces her after a particularly close lightning strike, her body is “warm, palpating” and her face and lips are flushed. In contrast, after the storm and the lovemaking, Calixta relaxes. Not a single word characterizes her tasks as hurried or frantic as she prepares dinner, and in fact, her calmer state of mind allows her to act more lovingly toward her family—an ironic outcome of the encounter that should cause friction, not ease, between her and the husband whose trust she violates.
