6 Nov 2026
Episode 35: “Her Letters” by Kate Chopin
There’s nothing wrong with having relationships before you get married. You have to get to know people to understand what qualities you really want in a partner, and what qualities you can’t have in a partner. I’m not married, but that sounds like a no brainer.
In this story, we begin with a woman who knows that it’s wrong to pine over another man. She’s wrestling with herself to throw away the love letters she got from a previous lover. She wants to erase that part of her history, but only gets to throw a few of them into a lit fire before she physically can't. The idea of not being able to part with your first (or strongest) love’s tangible words is sweet, if you’re not already married and living with someone else. At that point, it’s preposterous.
The worst part comes next when she decides to leave those letters to her husband, with a note saying, “With perfect faith in his loyalty and his love, I ask him to destroy it unopened.” She’s hiding this massive secret from him, one that explains the coldness she shows, and leaves him in charge of destroying it. To add insult to injury, the only reason she still has those letters is because she tried her hardest and she couldn’t bear to get rid of them. During her cold and passionless existence with her husband she showed more love towards those letters than to the man down the hall.
Her husband later states that she was cold to him, “but watchful of his comfort and happiness”. We can infer that she did her duty as a wife to her husband, but didn’t love him. That seemed to be enough for him. He was happy. She was unfulfilled. He has the letters, hasn’t opened them, and does as she says in disposing of them in a river near the city they live in. Then he agonizes over what those letters could be. He guesses an affair and begins to question all of their friends and acquaintances. When no one can give him any idea, he goes to her books to see if she’s written any thing in them. She hasn’t.
This whole story makes me think of those times when you want to go through your partner’s phone because you just know something is wrong. Then you keep second guessing yourself because you know you shouldn’t, but then you finally do. All of a sudden you know the truth, it’s confirmed, and you wish you hadn’t looked in the first place. I haven’t done it, but I can understand the urge.
If it were you in this situation, would you have opened the letters or would you have disposed of them? Disposing of them could lead to agony if you truly believe it could have been something big. Reading of them could shed some light on a situation that has you rethinking your entire past with the one you love the most, how long had they been lying to you?
Let me know in the comments if you’d rather hold on to the memories of the love you shared with a partner that you knew wasn’t perfect or if you’d rather want to know the secrets they left behind no matter what that may cost.
Be sure to Like this episode and comment your thoughts!
Goodnight,
x Rachael
The music for this podcast was provided by Miles Agean. Check out his album, Alpenglow, on Apple Music & Spotify.
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