The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty Page: 27

                                
27
emotion of a young woman for a young man and the transience of relation between
people in the rushing passage of life. In the beginning of the story, symbolically, Caline
is awakened by the outside element suddenly coming into her peaceful country life as she
is awakened from her lazy and relaxed slumber as the train suddenly stops in the middle
of the open field. The description of the beginning of this happening tells us that in the
first place the novel incident is no little shock for the young woman: "She had slept long
and soundly, when something awoke her as suddenly as if it had been a blow." It tells
that "such a thing had not happened before within her recollection." Caline attempts to
overcome the shock of her first exposure to new elements by actually approaching nearer
to what has been introduced to her by accident. She ventures to get clearer knowledge as
to the original departing point and destination of the train cargoes and bravely sets off to
live in the city. In the city, after some effort, it seems to her that perhaps she has
succeeded in merging with city life because many things in the city start to appear quite
agreeable to her. It has not been difficult for her to adjust and accept the surface features
of the life she has never known before, such as being exposed to the language used in the
city and going about a market place and a seaport.
However, what really happened in her heart is subtler than outward factors.
Pretty soon, she reaches a truer realization about what the experience has caused in her
mind. After she has gotten used to the physical novelties of the city, she faces the void in
her mind. She comes to see that she has ultimately failed to fill the desire of her heart,
that is, to meet and to talk to the pleasant-faced boy who had made the sketch of her that
day in the country side. For Caline the encounter with city life becomes the initiation to a