SOURCE: Branscomb, Jack. “Chopin's ‘Ripe Figs.’” The Explicator 52, no. 3 (spring 1994): 165-66.

In the following essay, Branscomb discusses the importance of time in “Ripe Figs.”

Kate Chopin's “Ripe Figs” (1:199), though one of the most interesting pieces in A Night in Acadie (1897), has received relatively little critical comment, possibly because of its brevity (under three hundred words) and its apparent simplicity. In the only extended treatment the story has received, Elaine Gardiner calls it “barely … a sketch” (379), although she effectively makes the case for its charm and its importance among Chopin's works. Like others who comment on the story (Ewell 100; Skaggs 27), Gardiner emphasizes the importance of contrasts, natural imagery, and cyclical patterns in the plot and argues that the story presents a harmonious relationship between the representatives of youth and age within the natural cycles of human life. While acknowledging the importance of the motifs Gardiner points out, I shall...