Kate Chopin

A pair of silk stockings

Mrs Sommers was a wife and a mother and she took care of / looked after her two children. One day she found fifteen dollars in the street. It seemed to her a very large amount of money and she spent some days thinking how she might invest them. She decided to spend one dollar or two for her children's clothes because they needed them. When she went out for shopping, she entered the shop, where she found a pair of silk stockings on sale. She liked them and decided to buy them, so she asked the shop girl for a pair in her size. She put them on immediately, she abandoned thinking about responsibilities, for once, and she bought new clothes for herself. She went to the shoe shop and tried a pair of shoes to suit her new stockings. So she bought a pair of boots that cost more than she usually spent. She hadn't worn gloves for a long time and she decided to buy a pair. Her new clothes made her more self-confident; she felt a sense of belonging to the well-dressed multitude. Afterthats she was very hungry and she decided to go into a restaurant where there were rich people. Afterwards she entered a theatre to watch a play. She laughed at the comedy and she and the gaudy woman next to her wept over the tragedy. At the end of the play she waited for a cable car to go back home. A man, who was sitting opposite to her, seemed to like the expression on her face; he couldn't understand that she didn't want the cable car to stop but to go on with her forever.