25 pages • 50 minutes read
The Night Came Slowly
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Background
Ideological Context: First-Wave Feminism
Though the narrator is never explicitly given a gender, it is widely assumed to be a woman and perhaps Chopin herself. Chopin’s fictional works usually share similarities to her real life and have many autobiographical elements. For example, they are often set in Louisiana, where she lived with her husband, and her stories commonly reflect her Creole heritage. The nature of 19th-century womanhood was one of the biggest themes in Chopin’s works. Her most famous work, The Awakening (1899), is acclaimed as one of the prototypical works in the American feminist canon.
By the time Chopin was writing, the first wave of feminism was underway in the United States. The suffrage movement had been active since the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and women activists were advocating for property and economic rights. Still, women thinkers and writers weren’t always given proper acclaim or credit. Chopin faced extensive backlash for The Awakening because it explored ideas like female sexuality and oppression, and the book fell out of print. It wasn’t until the 1960s when there was increased interest in women’s studies and women’s liberation that Chopin’s work became firmly established in the American literary canon.
“The Night Came Slowly” does not have the same explicit feminist themes as some of Chopin’s longer works. However, this work can still be interpreted through a feminist lens. Part of the narrator’s disdain for mankind’s opinions may stem from society’s oppression of women in the 19th century. Throughout the story, Chopin uses the gendered word “man” or “men” to refer to the whole of humanity. This was normal for the time, but it also highlights why the narrator may be losing interest in human beings. Literature and knowledge in general were highly influenced by men during Chopin’s life, represented by the unpleasant man teaching a Bible class in the story. When the narrator writes that she does not want men or books because they make her suffer, a feminist reading would suggest that human wisdom is biased because most fields exclude women. Nature, meanwhile, does not have that same bias. Nature’s wisdom, unlike man’s prejudiced wisdom, is not arrogant or warped by societal biases.
Cultural Context: 19th-Century Environmentalism
While the environmental concerns that Kate Chopin would have experienced in the 19th century are quite different from the environmental concerns we have today, contemporary environmental movements began to emerge at this time. Groups in the United States began to fight to preserve wildlife and reduce pollution stemming from the industrial revolution and urbanization. Chopin wrote her works at a time when humanity’s relationship with nature was becoming a bigger concern as nature was sacrificed for human advancement. This concern over how human life impacts nature is one of the most prominent contexts in “The Night Came Slowly.”
The 19th century in the United States saw, for example, President Ulysses S. Grant sign the bill to create Yellowstone, the country’s first national park, in 1872. Mackinac National Park followed in 1875 (though it was decommissioned in 1895). Sequoia and Yosemite came next in 1890. Regulation of hunting in the United States also began in the 19th century, driven by the emerging concept of preservationist conservation. The national interest in environmentalism and protecting nature fed and was fueled by the art and literature of the century. In “The Night Came Slowly,” as in much of her other work, Chopin seems to express a growing frustration with the hubris of men—perhaps associated with the damage caused by industrialization—and a great attraction to the profundity of nature.
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By Kate Chopin
