By Carter Forman
Edited by Natalie Hrga and Coco Usher
Kate Chopin’s evocative short story “A Pair of Silk Stockings” depicts the social world split into two. She shows the proletarian and bourgeois spheres to be ineluctably separate, causing Mrs. Sommers’ attempted ascension from the former to the latter to be proven futile. Commodity consumption appears in her eyes a ticket out of the crushing mundanity of servitude into a bourgeois life of luxury and leisure. The bewitching, sensuous allure which commodities are imbued within the story are, I argue, a form of what Karl Marx called the commodity fetish. Essentially, commodity fetishism is a quality commodities acquire under capitalism which makes them into magical, quasi-divine items “abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” (Marx, Capital). These qualities obscure both the “definite social relation between [people]”—labor—which produces commodities and the social reality they exist in once produced. Commodities thus appear to consumers like Mrs. Sommers to be independent, even uniquely important and real; as Marx suggests, “the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life.” Purchasing such commodities seemingly allows Mrs. Sommers to remake herself from a proletarian to bourgeois woman, in the process erasing both her real self and the existence or relevance of all those around her. However, fetishism ceases when Mrs. Sommers can no longer afford to consume, after which she is ousted from the bourgeois world back to her working-class life. Within only a few pages, Chopin swiftly destroys, revives, and reimposes Mrs. Sommers’ identity. Thus, my argument is twofold: first, I will show that Mrs. Sommers’ commodities contain three crucial elements of fetishism as laid out by Marx, demonstrating the applicability of the concept to her journey. To follow, I will further argue that this fetishism engenders a promise of escape from working-class conditions, the falsity of which severely fragments Mrs. Sommers’ identity and ultimately reinforces the impossibility of true class ascendance.
Chopin shrouds the origins of commodities in mystery, removing them from any context and describing them as if they appeared out of thin air to Mrs. Sommers. This motif is Chopin’s literary manifestation of what Marx identifies as the “enigmatical character” of commodities. (Marx, Capital). From the story’s first line, the conspicuous lack of context surrounding commodities already is present: “Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars” (Chopin 1). Since Chopin does not describe how Mrs. Sommers acquired the money—which Marx viewed as a commodity itself rather than just a way of purchasing commodities—its origin is obscured by what Marx calls a “mystical veil” (Marx, Capital). Almost immediately after setting out to spend the fifteen dollars, Mrs. Sommers becomes exhausted and must lie down to rest. While doing so, Mrs. Sommers grows aware “that her hand had encountered something very soothing, very pleasant to touch,” that being the titular pair of stockings (Chopin 1). Just like the money, this second commodity appears to Mrs. Sommers with no identifiable material origin, giving them a mysterious aura. The stockings’ dreamlike, hallucinatory quality is bolstered by the fact that they appear to her while she is experiencing an “all-gone limp feeling” of exhaustion, operating in an almost somnambulistic state (1). Marx calls the realm from which fetishized commodities emerge a “mist-enveloped region,” which could be equally applied to describing the mystified place dreams come from (Marx, Capital). From this region, myriad stockings continue to bubble up in front of Mrs. Sommers: “here was a light-blue pair; there were some lavender, some all black and various shades of tan and gray” (Chopin 2). Chopin’s description contains no description of the store’s interior, nor of the shelves these stockings occupy—where “here” and “there” actually are is not told. Their lack of spatial context gives the illusion that they are not products on shelves, but rather mystical, autonomous beings. Marx registers this erasure of context, suggesting, “in that world [the world of commodity consumption], the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life” (Marx, Capital). The commodities show themselves to Mrs. Sommers from nowhere; thus, they rather than her are the scene’s active, defining agents. Later in the story, it is said that Mrs. Sommers’ “next temptation presented itself in the shape of a matinee poster” (Chopin 3). The formulation of this line suggests that the poster is what conducts an action, by “present[ing] itself” as though it were a being and not an inanimate object, leaving the nebulous commodity realm of its own accord to meet her.
Alongside the mysticism of their origins, the commodities’ overwhelming physical sensuousness evokes a second key element of commodity fetishism presented by Marx. According to him, “products of labor become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses” (Marx, Capital). This dual (im)perceptibility is crucial for understanding how commodities function in Chopin’s story. Looking at an aforementioned quote through this lens—“her hand had encountered something very soothing, very pleasant to touch”—reveals how Chopin’s description emphasizes not only the enigmatic quality of the stockings, but also their rich sensuality (Chopin 1). Before even knowing that she is touching stockings (they are only “something”), Mrs. Sommers is overcome by what they feel like; thought is secondary to touch. They are perceptible to the body but not to the mind—sensuous yet senseless. Chopin deepens the intensity of this dichotomy as she writes, focalizing Mrs. Sommers, “how good was the touch of the raw silk to her flesh!” (2). The passionate exclamation mark and sexually charged words “raw” and “flesh” give the line a rapturous tone. The physical, tactile experience of the stockings is so overwhelming that it is near-orgasmic. Crucially, the pleasure that Mrs. Sommers derives from the consumptive experience has nothing to do with the function of the products, but only her surface-level interaction with them. Marx explains, “there is nothing mysterious about [a product when]… we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent” (Marx, Capital). That is, if commodities were bought only to satisfy practical needs, they would cease to be enigmatic. However, Mrs. Sommers’ sensuous experience demonstrates that commodities’ main purpose is not to satisfy strictly practical necessities. Chopin cements this fact through Mrs. Sommers’ reaction to seeing the titular items: “what a very small parcel it was!” (Chopin 2). Her exclamation hinges not on the stockings themselves, but on the immediate physical quality of their box. The smallness of the parcel, the smoothness of the stockings, is her primary concern—their sensuous form and not their content or usefulness. Extreme sensuality becomes, in Chopin’s hands, a signal of capitalist consumption’s shallowness; things are bought because of how they feel or look rather than their practical use. As Marx puts it, under capitalism “useful articles are produced for the purpose of being exchanged” rather than of being used (Marx, Capital). Mrs. Sommers’ consumption of food at the luxury restaurant she patronizes is similarly superficial. She does not want “a profusion,” that is, she does not want to eat enough to actually appease her hunger, but enough to give her the sensory and aesthetic experience of bourgeois consumption (Chopin 3). She “taste[s] a bite… read[s] a word or two,… sip[s] the amber wine,… wiggle[s] her toes in the silk stockings,” all insubstantial, meaningless actions (3). She engages with everything on only the surface, sensuous level; she buys food not to sate herself but to experience the act of high-class dining. Consumption—in its most literal sense—exists only for its own sake.
A third crucial element of commodity fetishism that appears in the story is its insidious concealment of the labor on which the production and sale of commodities rely. When Mrs. Sommers buys new shoes, any actual description of the clerk’s labor—his fitting her shoes—is conspicuously absent. She enters the store, sees the clerk, and suddenly “glance[s] down at the polished, pointed-tipped boots” (2). A step has been skipped in Chopin’s description; labor has been obscured; shoes have appeared on Mrs. Sommers’ feet apparently of their own accord. Marx is again crucial for framing this choice of omission: the commodity fetish makes it so that “the social character of men’s labor appears to [consumers] as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labor” (Marx, Capital). Because commodities are all that exist in Mrs. Sommers’ mind, any evidence of the work that went into producing or selling those commodities is invisible to her. Not only do commodities emerge from a mysterious place, that place also precludes any indication of the existence of labor. Chopin enacts this erasure through the narrative exclusion of the shoe store worker’s labor. In the same vein, she describes the glove store worker as “a pretty, pleasant young creature, delicate and deft of touch, [who] drew a long-wristed ‘kid’ over Mrs. Sommers’ hand” (Chopin 2). The reality of her labor is erased not by narrative exclusion but by dehumanization, the word “creature” placing the glove store worker on a sub-human level. The adjectives “pretty” and “pleasant” also subtly dehumanize her by linking her with the story’s inanimate commodities; the only other times Chopin uses those words is to describe objects and limbs: “her foot and ankle looked very pretty”; stockings are “pleasant to touch”; Mrs. Sommers is “accustomed to other pleasant things” (1, 2). This subtle linkage between the clerk and these objects reflects the mental state that Mrs. Sommers is operating under; swept up by the commodity fetish, she is conditioned into dehumanizing workers. She does so not out of conscious enmity but of subconscious elimination of everything surrounding her which is not the commodities themselves. The waiters at the high-class restaurant know they must be “soft-stepping” in order not to interfere with their rich customers’ dining (Chopin 3). As soon as Mrs. Sommers sits down, “an attentive waiter at once approach[es] to take her order,” ensuring a seamless experience (3). The workers are used to interacting with bourgeois customers and consequently have internalized that they should veil their labor.
Now that the relevance of the commodity fetish concept—with its mystification of the origin of commodities, its emphasis on surface-level consumption, and its obfuscation of labor—has been established, its effects on Mrs. Sommers’ identity can be explored. As has already been hinted, the commodity fetish has an incantatory, hypnotic effect on Mrs. Sommers, the need to consume taking over both her mind and body. The “mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility” can now be understood as the fetish itself, guiding her mindlessly around with no purpose other than buying, buying, buying (2). Before falling under the spell of the commodity fetish, Mrs. Sommers’ main characteristics were her frugality and practicality; she is described as “one who knew the value of bargains; who could stand for hours making her way inch by inch toward the desired object that was selling below cost” (1). Chopin’s initial characterization of Mrs. Sommers underscores her rationality, especially when it comes to money, above all else. Her initial pecuniary sense transforming into recklessness due to the commodity fetish is thus tantamount to a co-optation and erasure of her entire self. Abnormal purchasing power changes Mrs. Sommers’ character completely, turning her into someone who “did not mind the difference of a dollar or two more in the price so long as she got what she desired” (3). Not only is she no longer frugal, she is also no longer thoughtful. Mrs. Sommers’ first impulse upon receiving the money was to use it in a “proper and judicious” way, to not “act hastily [or] do anything she might afterward regret” (1). Chopin describes how she “walked about apparently in a dreamy state, [but she was] really absorbed in speculation and calculation” (1). This statement is an ironic foreshadowing of the transformation that the commodity fetish will soon enact, in which Mrs. Sommers will be purchasing, seemingly motivated by calculation, but will really be in a dreamy, unthinking state. Indeed, once possessed by the commodity fetish, the entire act of thinking appears in retrospect to Mrs. Sommers to be a “laborious and fatiguing function” (2). Whereas she is first presented as thoughtful above all else, when consuming she “was not going through any acute mental process or reasoning with herself, nor was she striving to explain to her satisfaction the motive of her action. She was not thinking at all” (2). The commodity fetish has enacted an inversion of her personality; her only priority is consumption. Her personality inversion is a parallel of what Marx describes: “A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing” (Marx, Capital). Rather than analysis, Mrs. Sommers learns of the commodity’s ‘queerness,’ its bewitching allure, first-hand. No matter how rational, frugal, and practical she initially planned to be, as soon as the “impulse” of the commodity fetish possesses her, she is bound to spend compulsively and unthinkingly.
Parallel to this personality transformation from frugal to reckless, the commodity fetish enacts an even more fundamental transformation: Mrs. Sommers’ class ascension. Fetishism makes Mrs. Sommers believe (consciously or not) that purchasing commodities will lead to class transcendence. This process begins with the fifteen dollars, which give “her a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years” (Chopin 1). That feeling is status, which brings with it an inherent movement up on the societal class ladder. Chopin’s description of Mrs. Sommers’ “feeling of importance” also makes clear the identity cleavage that comes along with a change in class status; there are now two Mrs. Sommers starting to emerge, one proletarian and the other an emerging bourgeois. The new one knows the “feeling of importance” while the old has not felt it in years. Mrs. Sommers’ act of “exchang[ing] her cotton stockings for… new silk ones” is a metonymic enactment of her simultaneous entrance into bourgeois society and escape from the proletarian world (2). She trades in commodities which represent her proletarian self and replaces them with commodities representative of her new bourgeois status. But she does not immediately become a full member of the upper class after purchasing the stockings. Rather, wearing luxury stockings alongside other old, shabby clothes extant from her proletarian life cleaves her in two, demarcates both her physical body and her identity into opposed working-class and upper-class parts. Looking down, “her foot and ankle looked very pretty. She could not realize that they belonged to her and were a part of herself” (2). Because of the commodities on them, Mrs. Sommers’ foot and ankle are those of a bourgeois woman, but the rest of her body is still working-class. Thus, Chopin shows commodities to define identity: luxury commodities make glittering bourgeois appendages and cheap commodities make dull proletarian ones. Beauty is not an aesthetic quality but a financial one. The shoe department clerk is baffled by Mrs. Sommers’ clashing clothing, which signals to him two irreconcilable class identities: he “could not make her out; he could not reconcile her shoes with her stockings” (2). Mrs. Sommers, because of the contrasting commodities on her body, cannot be neatly categorized as either poor or rich, meaning neither the death of her proletarian self nor the birth of her bourgeois self are complete. In order to fully erase her former proletarian status, she must buy more commodities until that self is physically and spiritually covered up; commodity fetishism makes her believe that buying enough luxury products guarantees a permanent achievement of class transcendence. Thus, Mrs. Sommers buys an “excellent and stylish” pair of shoes and “well-fitting” gloves which temporarily coronate her into bona fide upper-class status (2). She has covered her body in bourgeois commodities and thus has entered the bourgeois world. This complete sartorial enclosing allows her to mentally recast herself as “a princess of royal blood” (3). The commodities give her a new identity internally as well as externally; she is no longer the working-class Mrs. Sommers but a bourgeois, even royal, version of herself. Here, Marx’s idea that commodities “assume a fantastic form different from their reality… in the transactions of society” also applies to consumers such as Mrs. Sommers, who, through buying commodities, takes on a “fantastic form different from [her] reality” (Marx, Capital).
However, Chopin reveals bourgeois existence to be fundamentally vacuous, Mrs. Sommers’ new upper-class life as empty as her commodity consumption. The creation of her bourgeois identity means she is now defined only by her commodities: “her stockings and boots and well fitting gloves had worked marvels in her bearing—had given her a feeling of assurance, a sense of belonging to the well-dressed multitude” (Chopin 2). She is described only by the clothes she wears, a nameless, faceless mannequin for gloves, stockings, and shoes, an avatar for the commodities that now exert complete control over her. The bourgeois “identity” these commodities have given her is in fact the lack of any identity. When she enters the bourgeois restaurant that she had formerly only “sometimes caught glimpses of,” her appearance creates “no surprise, no consternation” like the shoe clerk’s did earlier (3). She is no longer conspicuous, but this also means she is no longer a distinct individual. The class Mrs. Sommers has entered into is nothing but a nebulous “multitude,” its members lacking in any individuality. They are described only as “well-dressed… people of fashion” (2, 3). Through these descriptions, Chopin draws attention to their superficiality. The bourgeoisie is defined solely based on its purchases, their clothing a decadent, shimmering shell adorning a vacuous being with no distinguishing characteristics. In the restaurant, she is surrounded by “quiet ladies and gentlemen… who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like her own” (3). They are like her; she is like them. Her identity has been replaced with a void—nameless, faceless, identityless, one of a blurry mass of people who are not part of the social world but the commodity world. As Marx puts it, in the bourgeois world, “definite social relations between men… assume, in their eyes, the fantastic form of relation[s] between things” (Marx, Capital). Bourgeois people—now including Mrs. Sommers—interact with objects and are defined by objects, removed from the social realm; they are victims of the totalized commodity fetish.
Despite its intensity, Mrs. Sommers’ entrance into the upper class, as she and the audience are swiftly reminded, is nothing but an illusion caused by the blinding power of the commodity fetish. Once she has no more money left to spend she is brought crashing down, “like a dream ended” (Chopin 3). This again cements that it is not the commodities themselves which bring her the thoughtless reverie of bourgeois life, but the fact of continuous consumption, the promise of more commodities. It is not as though losing her gloves, her stockings, her shoes ends her dream; she still has these, but now she is without money—no more ability to consume. This drive to consume leaves Mrs. Sommers with “a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever” (3). Since her bourgeois identity can only be maintained so long as she can continue to consume, she desires to be able to consume forever, to ride the cable car of riches and influence ad infinitum. However, her inability to do so gives the story a cyclical nature and with it a sense of inevitability. Mrs. Sommers returns to the person she was before she received the money, the frugal and thoughtful working-class version of herself. Marx encapsulates Mrs. Sommers’ arc when describing the illusory quality of a table as commodity: “the form of wood… is altered by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, everyday thing, wood” (Marx, Capital). Although Mrs. Sommers was altered by her brief foray into luxury, her final realization is that she is still, despite the commodity’s promise to make her feel otherwise, the “common, everyday,” proletarian Mrs. Sommers. The commodity fetish promises her a new life through consumption which she achieves only temporarily. That her hope for class ascendance was achieved briefly makes its sudden end all the more heartbreaking. Although she bought so much, Mrs. Sommers is left even emptier than before. Her emptiness confirms that permanently becoming one of the bourgeois “multitude” is all but impossible for someone of her status.
The short few pages of Chopin’s story contain an endless amount of depth in their diagnosis of capitalism’s powerful traps. Mrs. Sommers falls under the spell of the commodity fetish, as evidenced by the enigmatic origin, extreme sensuousness, and labor-erasing quality of the commodities she buys. The fetish possesses both her mind and her body, conditioning her to believe that nothing is real or important except for the next commodity. As she consumes more and more, her personal and class identities fracture; she turns from rational to reckless, from working-class to upper-class. Once she does, Mrs. Sommers realizes that the bourgeois lifestyle is vapid and superficial. As soon as she is unable to keep consuming, this luxurious albeit empty life is once again made inaccessible to her, and her proletarian identity is abruptly reimposed. Mrs. Sommers’ arc epitomizes the consumer experience under capitalism, showing how the system preys on individuals’ vulnerable desires for escape from difficult conditions, only to assert in the end that meaningful class transcendence is impossible. It is a violent, volatile process to which poor people like Mrs. Sommers are innocent victims, their identities destabilized and fractured. Commodity fetishism gives false hope, only to cruelly shatter it. In his Manuscripts of 1844, Marx distills this brutal reality of the commodity fetish: “Every product is a bait with which to seduce away [the consumer’s] very being [and] his money; every real and possible need is a weakness which will lead the fly to the glue-pot” (Marx, Manuscripts of 1844). Mrs. Sommers, and all the working-class consumers she represents, are nothing but flies at the mercy of the illusive trap that is commodity fetishism.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. “A Pair of Silk Stockings.” The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited by Per Seyersted, Louisiana State University Press, 1969, 2006.
Marx, Karl. “Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property.” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, translated by Martin Milligan, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1844, 1959. Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm. Accessed April 2025.
Marx, Karl. “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.” Capital, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1867, 1887. Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4. Accessed April 2025.
Feature Photo
Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “A pair of silk stockings keysheet.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1914.