Narrator and point of view

The short story “A Pair of Silk Stockings” by Kate Chopin is a third-person narrative with an omniscient narrator who prefers to confine himself/herself to the point of view of the main character, Mrs. Summers. The author being a woman, Kate Chopin, we can assume the outside narrator is Chopin’s narrative voice.

The presence of the narrator and her implicit omniscience with regards to Mrs. Sommers is clearly revealed at the end, when she hypothesizes about the man who is looking at her: “In truth, he saw nothing­ unless he were wizard enough to detect a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever.”

But the fact that the narrator takes on Mrs. Sommers’ perspective is made clear from the very beginning, along with the fact t...