Kate Chopin "Ripe Figs"
From the short story:
"Not that the ripening of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman-Nainaine was."
Reading Kate Chopin's "Ripe Figs" online and in print
"Ripe Figs" characters
"Ripe Figs" time and place
"Ripe Figs" themes
When "Ripe Figs" was written and published
Questions and answers about "Ripe Figs"
Accurate texts of "Ripe Figs"
Articles and book chapters about "Ripe Figs"
Selected books that discuss Kate Chopin's short stories
"Ripe Figs" online and in print
You can read the story online (it's just a page or two long), although if you're citing a passage for research purposes, you should check your citation against one of these accurate printed texts.
"Ripe Figs" characters
- Maman-Nainaine
- Babette, Maman-Nainaine's goddaughter
"Ripe Figs" time and place
The story takes place in Louisiana, in the late nineteenth century.
"Ripe Figs" themes
You can read about finding themes in Kate Chopin's stories and novels on the Themes page of this site.
When Kate Chopin's "Ripe Figs" was written and published
The story was written on February 26, 1892, and published in Vogue on August 19, 1893, one of nineteen Kate Chopin stories that Vogue published. It was reprinted in Chopin's collection of stories A Night in Acadie in 1897.
You can find complete composition dates and publication dates for Chopin's works on pages 1003 to 1032 of The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited by Per Seyersted (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969, 2006).
Questions and answers about "Ripe Figs"
Q: Does "Ripe Figs" deserve to be called a short story? It's only one page long!
A: The original Vogue version calls it an "Idyl." Some critics think of it as a sketch.
Q: My professor says she remembers reading an article arguing that "Ripe Figs" is a good story for first approaching Kate Chopin, that it is a little version of some of Chopin's later works. Is there such an article? Where could I find it? What does its author mean by that argument?
A: Yes, the article is called "'Ripe Figs': Kate Chopin in Miniature." It was written by Elaine Gardiner. You can find its publication data below.
Gardiner argues that Chopin employs in "Ripe Figs" three techniques that she uses in her other work, including The Awakening--contrasts (youth and age, patience and impatience, innocence and experience); natural images as emotional correlatives and structural parameters (sugar cane, figs, chrysanthemums); and cyclical patterns (growth, movements directed by the seasons).
Q: I understand that some critics think of "Ripe Figs" as a children's story. What do they mean by that?
A: About a third of the short stories Kate Chopin wrote are ones she sent to magazines intended for children--magazines like Youth's Companion or Harper's Young People (although some, like this one, she sent to Vogue and other magazines)--or ones with subjects and themes similar to those. Today we know Chopin mostly through her works about intelligent, sensitive, adult women seeking integrity, independence, and fulfillment, struggling with social and cultural constraints. But Chopin had other subjects for her work, and some of those subjects appealed to children.
Peggy Skaggs writes that this story "reveals beautifully the differing perspectives on time of the child and the adult, expressing in one short page virtually the essence of the generation gap."
Barbara Ewell describes "Ripe Figs" as a "fine lyrical sketch that captures a fragile sensuousness in a child's eagerness for the ripening of the figs. . . . Chopin's harmonizing of [Babette's] wait--and, implicitly, all human life--with the slow processes of nature gives a characteristic poetry and dimension to this simple event."
And Pamela Knights notes that some of Chopin's children's stories "offer glimpses of young people demonstrating the competence, judgement and articulacy more usually ascribed to adults." Babette in "Ripe Figs," Knights adds, "presents Maman-Nainaine with evidence, in a beautifully appropriate form, that the older woman's stern contract has worked its course."
Q: What are we supposed to understand by Chopin's statement, "That is the way Maman-Nainaine was"?
A: In Kate Chopin's nineteenth-century Louisiana, Bernard Koloski writes, Creole culture often "shapes Creoles', 'Cajuns', blacks', and others' understanding of what is natural." Creole Maman-Nainaine gives no reason for why Babette is to visit her cousins when the figs are ripe or for why Frosine is to return the visit when the chrysanthemums are in bloom.
Maman-Nainaine and other Creoles in Chopin's fiction, Koloski writes, are "people who speak and act with authority and who by their words and actions show others that the authority they possess is deserved, is just, intrinsic, as 'natural' as the ease with which they live their lives and influence other people's."
You can see another Creole character like Maman-Nainaine in Chopin's short story "A Matter of Prejudice."
You can read more questions and answers about Kate Chopin and her work, and you can contact us with your questions.
For students and scholars
Accurate texts of "Ripe Figs"
The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Edited by Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969, 2006.
Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie. Edited by Bernard Koloski. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Stories. Edited by Sandra Gilbert. New York: Library of America, 2002.
Articles and book chapters about "Ripe Figs"
Knights, Pamela. "Kate Chopin and the Subject of Childhood." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 44–58. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.
Branscomb, Jack. "Chopin's 'Ripe Figs'." Explicator 52.3 (1994): 165–67.
Gardiner, Elaine. "'Ripe Figs': Kate Chopin in Miniature." MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 28.3 (1982): 379–82.
Selected books that discuss Kate Chopin's short stories
Koloski, Bernard, ed. Awakenings: The Story of the Kate Chopin Revival Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009.
Robert L. Gale. Characters and Plots in the Fiction of Kate Chopin Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2009.
Beer, Janet, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.
For scholars: We seek to make our listings of Chopin scholarship accurate and up to date. If you find a mistake, an omission, or a misplacement, would you tell us? If a listed article is available on the web, would you send us the link? Contact us.
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Ostman, Heather, ed. Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.
Arima, Hiroko. Beyond and Alone!: The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2006.
Beer, Janet. Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Stein, Allen F. Women and Autonomy in Kate Chopin's Short Fiction New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
Walker, Nancy A. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2001.
Koloski, Bernard. "Introduction" Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie by Kate Chopin New York: Penguin, 1999.
Toth, Emily. Unveiling Kate Chopin Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.
Koloski, Bernard. Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction New York: Twayne, 1996.
Petry, Alice Hall (ed.), Critical Essays on Kate Chopin New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.
Boren, Lynda S. and Sara deSaussure Davis (eds.), Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992.
Perspectives on KateChopin: Proceedings from the Kate Chopin International Conference, April 6, 7, 8, 1989 Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State UP, 1992.
Toth, Emily. "Introduction" A Vocation and a Voice New York: Penguin, 1991.
Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton New York: Greenwood, 1990.
Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin. New York: Morrow, 1990.
Elfenbein , Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1989.
Taylor, Helen. Gender, Race, and Region in the Writings of Grace King, Ruth McEnery Stuart, and Kate Chopin Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.
Bonner, Thomas Jr., The Kate Chopin Companion New York: Greenwood, 1988.
Bloom, Harold (ed.), Kate Chopin New York: Chelsea, 1987.
Ewell, Barbara C. Kate Chopin New York: Ungar, 1986.
Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin Boston: Twayne, 1985.
Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. American Fiction: An Historical and Critical Survey New York: Appleton-Century, 1936.
Rankin, Daniel, Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1932.
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