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Critics have noted that the third-person omniscient point of view in “The Storm” is remarkably objective. The narrator reports most events without bias or commentary, taking a “fly on the wall” approach. The narrator does not suggest that Bobinôt should work to please his wife sexually or that Calixta should be faithful or that Alcée should confess his infidelity and beg Clarisse to come home. The narrator knows all but stands back and lets events play out.
Only in the paragraphs that describe the lovemaking does the detached narratorial mask drop, as Alcée is overwhelmed by Calixta’s beauty and responsiveness and as Calixta experiences, apparently, sexual satisfaction for the first time. Calixta’s lips are “free to be tasted,” and her body adds “its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world.” The tone of these and other sensuous details is anything but objective.
After the storm passes, the matter-of-fact narratorial voice reasserts itself as life goes back to normal. It is as if, even in her choice of narrative style, Chopin insists on the normalcy and expectedness of sexual desire, especially for women. The narrator so carefully avoids passing judgment on anyone—the synced-up lovers, the distant wife who has tired of the marriage bed, the too-casual husband—that the final, slightly ironic sentence of the story stands out as almost wry: “The storm had passed and every one was happy.”
The story and its narrator may come across as ironic, and that last line—a stinger, almost a punchline—lends itself to irony. However, in the context of Chopin’s stories, the unbiased, observational third-person narrator is an authorial mask she sometimes uses to suspend judgment of the characters and to encourage readers, at least for the time it takes to read the story, to do the same.
