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

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘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 season of the figs’.

This source for the story’s key symbol of the ripening figs offers a clue to the story’s themes and concerns. When the figs eventually ripen, Babette believes they have ripened too late, whereas her godmother believes they have ripened unusually early in the season. Babette’s restlessness contrasts with Maman-Nainaine’s calm patience.

In other words, the story subtly explores the differences between the child’s immediate desires and the adult’s understanding of time and its natural flow. Babette – her very name suggesting a little ‘babe’ or ‘baby’ or someone who has yet to reach full maturity – cannot wait for the figs to ripen so she can take her journey to visit her cousins.

Her godmother’s comment at the end of ‘Ripe Figs’ indicates that this will be a solo journey: she tells Babette, ‘you will carry my love to them all’, indicating that she will not accompany her goddaughter. The story, then, is about more than just making one journey to visit other family members: that journey represents Babette’s broader journey, from dependence (on her godmother) towards independence.

Should we view ‘Ripe Figs’ as a coming-of-age story, then? The ripening of the figs definitely invites us to consider Babette’s journey towards maturity and independence. However, as so often with Kate Chopin’s fiction, perhaps labelling it a ‘coming-of-age story’ limits its meaning somewhat.

For we can also find in ‘Ripe Figs’ a tacit commentary on societal expectations and the limitations placed on girls. Babette must do as her godmother dictates, even though the condition she imposes on her goddaughter – that the figs must ripen before she can undertake her visit to her cousins – is arbitrary in its nature.

Point of View

The story is told using a third-person narrator, but it is focalised exclusively through the character of Babette. Restricting the narrative to Babette’s perspective emphasises her emotions and frustrations, allowing the reader to experience her impatience firsthand. Her godmother, by contrast, is kept at a distance.

Themes

This short story takes in several big themes. These include the passing of time and human patience (or a lack of patience): Chopin’s story highlights the contrasting perspectives on time between a child and an adult. Babette craves instant gratification, while Maman-Nainaine embodies the slow, patient unfolding of nature and life.

Another important theme is maturity and growth. The figs’ ripening symbolises Babette’s own journey towards maturity. Waiting teaches her patience and the value of experiences earned, not rushed, although whether she has heeded these lessons remains unstated.

However, we might also consider the tension between freedom and restraint which the story depicts. The story subtly touches on societal limitations placed on girls. Babette’s freedom hinges on an arbitrary condition, perhaps even an unfair one. Does this hint at broader restrictions which her godmother places upon her?

Perhaps: though if so, it is worth bearing in mind the end of the story, which reveals that Maman-Nainaine imposes these strange conditions on her own family visits, too (‘tell your tante Frosine I shall look for her at Toussaint – when the chrysanthemums are in bloom’). In other words, perhaps the godmother’s imposition of this restriction upon young Babette represents, instead of strict parenting or guardianship, the extension of the same ‘rules’ which govern her own social life.

Symbolism

Chopin’s use of symbolism makes the figs represent not just time, but also maturity, freedom, and the anticipation of experiences. The story, despite its brevity, paints a vivid picture of childhood longing and the bittersweet passage of time. The contrast between the vibrant summer and the initial greenness of the figs can be seen as a metaphor for the transition from childhood to adulthood.

The changing seasons reflect the passage of time and Babette’s evolving emotions. The initial spring holds promise, while the slow-moving summer tests her patience. Finally, the arrival of ripeness coincides with her freedom. But Maman-Nainaine’s calmness represents wisdom and an acceptance of time’s natural flow, contrasting with Babette’s childlike urgency.

Another way of viewing this is to say that Chopin’s ‘idyl’ offers a slight variation on an age-old trope: that the young cannot wait to grow up and the old know that our youth is over all too quickly.

We are invited to share in Babette’s impatience for the figs to reach maturity, even as we lament the fact that she is wishing her youth away in always waiting for a future moment which she is powerless to will into being any sooner. Her daily ‘disconsolate’ trek back to the house after she has inspected the still-unripe figs suggests someone unable to enjoy the present moment for what it is.

The telling word ‘seemed’ (‘It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait’) also hints at the subjectivity of the experience: to Babette it may appear a long time, but her godmother, who has witnessed many more seasons than Babette, knows that the figs will soon ripen again as time passes ever more quickly year on year.