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Literary Analysis Of The Storm

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Lynette Nenadich
Professor Atkins
Introduction to Literature
24 October 2017
Feminism in McKnight Malmar’s “The Storm” On the surface of the short story “The Storm” by McKnight Malmar, appears to be about a wife who comes back home on a stormy night to a murdered body. However, a feminist reading of this story reveals how women in society are breaking free and rising above the patriarchy. Malmar utilizes Ben, the envelope, dead body, red dress, and storm in this way to symbolize that the women’s in society days of being subordinate to men is coming to an end. In “The Storm” Janet comes back home on a stormy night from visiting her sister, where she believed her husband was eagerly awaiting her homecoming, however he is nowhere to be found. Disappointed, she waits desperately for his arrival, where she comes across another of the white envelopes that her husband is constantly receiving through the mail. She goes on to tearing the envelope into very small pieces and then burns them in the fireplace. She later on makes her way down into the cellar for wood, where she stumbles upon her trunk which contained a murdered woman’s dead body in a red dress. A while after her discovery Janet’s husband Ben finally appears later in the evening, and is unbothered by the news of the dead body. When he finally decides to check it out it is nowhere to be found, and calls Janet back down into the cellar to show her that there was not a dead body in the trunk after all. Ben in the story
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