SOURCE: Dyer, Joyce. “Symbolic Setting in Kate Chopin's ‘A Shameful Affair.’” Southern Studies 20, no. 4 (winter 1981): 447-52.

In the following essay, Dyer discusses the ways in which Chopin's use of setting in “A Shameful Affair” prefigures the symbolism of The Awakening.

“A Shameful Affair,” written on June 5th and 9th of 1891, represents an exciting thematic prelude to The Awakening. In it Mildred Orme, for a moment in her life at least, trades volumes of Ibsen and Browning for the broad, brawny shoulders of Fred Evelyn, a farmhand. She suffers more from guilt than Edna Pontellier seems to. Nevertheless, she makes discoveries about her physical nature that are as overwhelming, forceful, and important as Edna's. She awakens eight years before Chopin's best-known heroine. She prepares the way.

“A Shameful Affair” anticipates The Awakening's technique as well as theme. The story explores Mildred's desires symbolically. The setting—the lush Kraummer...