A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin

This is the 66th book in the Little Black Classics series by Penguin. An ingenious idea, by the way, as it is rather pleasant to either read short works by loved authors, or to see whether one would be interested in reading other works by popular authors before committing to say, Crime and Punishment.

Although titled 'A Pair of Silk Stockings', that is only one of the short stories in this collection. There are five stories and they are all great. Hmm. That is rather vague. Let me go into a bit more detail.

Chopin is an author I was required to read at university all those decades ago. I read The Awakening, and although I am completely fuzzy on what it was about, the theme of feminism does seem to venture under all those foggy mossy memories. (In other words, I could be mistaken.)

Kate Chopin was extremely progressive and modern in her thinking. When I think of the things that my grandmother (at 93) believes, such as it is almost a mortal sin that I am single, and that, as a student, when I worked in a pub, I was a prostitute (I sold beer, for heavens sake, not my body!!) I can even appreciate Chopin even more. Her collection of short stories deal with feminism and racism and were initially published at the end of the 1800s.

I particularly enjoyed the first short story, which was a critical view on racism but yet also had massive feminist undertones. The end of that one was disturbing with the injustice. Knowing what one does about what women were legally able to do, it leaves one under no illusions as to what .... Ahhh, once again, to write another word is to spoil something.

The other story that I appreciated was the final one, A Pair of Silk Stockings. A woman is in possession of a large amount of money, and chooses to spend it. I will leave you to read what she spends it on. I can guarantee that most mothers out there would feel a deep connection with the story.

Overall I rated this 4 stars on Goodreads, although most of the stories were worthy of 5 stars.

This is the 50th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.