A Summary and Analysis of Kate Chopin’s ‘Ripe Figs’

‘Ripe Figs' is a short story by the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904). Subtitled ‘An Idyl', the story is one of the shortest Chopin wrote, running to just one page. She wrote the story on 26 February 1892 and gave it the working title ‘Babette's Visit'; it was published in Vogue magazine in 1893 (Chopin was paid $3 for the story). In the story, a girl or young woman named Babette asks her godmother if she can go and visit her cousins, and the godmother tells her that she can visit them once the figs are ripe. Babette waits impatiently for the summer day to arrive when the figs ripen. Summary A girl named Babette longs to visit her cousins down on the Bayou-Lafourche. Her godmother, Maman-Nainaine, tells Babette that she can go and see her cousins when the figs are ripe. This condition becomes a source of frustration for Babette, as she impatiently waits for the unripe green figs to transform into sweet, juicy symbols of freedom. At the beginning of the story, they are ‘like little hard, green marbles'. Some time elapses, and Babette's restlessness grows ever greater. Every day she goes out to see if the figs have ripened yet, but she is always disappointed. However, eventually the day arrives when Babette discovers the figs, ripe and ready. She presents a dozen purple figs to her godmother, served on a platter, which she has picked from the fig-trees. The story concludes without explicitly showing her journey, leaving the reader to imagine her joyous reunion with her cousins. Her godmother tells Babette to pass a message to Babette's aunt, Frosine, informing her that she will seek a reunion with her ‘when the chrysanthemums are in bloom'. Analysis It is suggestive that Chopin altered the title of this story from ‘Babette's Visit' to the more symbolic ‘Ripe Figs'. According to Pamela Knights in her editorial notes to the Oxford World's Classics edition of Chopin's The Awakening and Other Stories , the eventual title recalls a Louisiana proverb: ‘When you are young and pretty, it passes quickly like the […]