A Respectable Woman

“A Respectable Woman” begins with an expectation, but it resolves without one. The story opens with Mrs. Baroda’s presumptions about her husband’s friend, while the ending wraps up by directly withholding her expectations or plans. In this regard, the ambiguous ending adds a symmetry to the narrative. Furthermore, instead of revealing exactly what Mrs. Baroda will do, the ambiguous ending invites readers to form their own expectations and make their own meaning out of the story. This literary device, therefore, has a rhetorical purpose, allowing the story to be more engaging by encouraging readers to enter more deeply into the imagined world and consider its many possibilities. When “A Respectable Woman” was first published in Vogue magazine in the 1890s, the primary readership likely would have been women with lives similar to Mrs. Baroda’s, which would have made the ambiguous ending even more relevant and engaging.

Writers working within the Realist tradition sought to bring a “realness” to their writing via the characters, plot, and setting. Verisimilitude in fiction involves using specific details that give the story an appearance and feeling of reality.

Chopin creates verisimilitude for the Louisiana plantation setting through small, specific details, such as the “wide portico in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars” (Paragraph 5), “the scented, velvety touch” of the breeze coming off of a sugar field (Paragraph 6), and “the live oak tree at the end of the gravel walk” (Paragraph 17).