1	KATE CHOPIN’S BRUSH WITH MAGIC REALISM IN “AN EGYPTIAN CIGARETTE” Kim Wells
2	Magic Realism: Defined Typically defined as a construct of many writers from Third World countries. Realistic fiction wherein the extraordinary occurs and is not thought of as unusual. Has been described as a way of breaking away from the constraints of linear time and hierarchical thinking. A way of escaping the patriarchal modes of writing that have dominated these often post-colonial countries. The definition of this form of fiction writing can be expanded to include women as representatives of repressed cultures. As writers, these women were often trivialized as "scribblers" during a time women could not even vote, and they could be considered "colonized" by their culture.
3	Kate Chopin's "An Egyptian Cigarette" Published in 1897 in Vogue Relates a supernatural event in a realistic context. Her female narrator experiences an out of body experience from smoking an unusual cigarette. After taking "one long inspiration of the Egyptian cigarette" (68) she begins to feel "a subtle, disturbing current,“ (68).
4	The story: The narrator enters the body of an Egyptian woman who has rejected her gods for her lover and then been abandoned by that lover. The reader experiences this event along with the narrator–it seems real and there is no distance from this occurrence. Chopin does not reveal any judgment against this unusual event. This "magic" seems "real."
5	close-read the story: I laughed at the oracles and scoffed at the stars when they told that after the rapture of life I would open my arms inviting death, and the waters would envelop me. [. . .] I turned from the gods and said: "There is but one; Bardja is my god." That was when I decked myself with lilies and wove flowers into a garland and held him close in the frail, sweet fetters.
6	Eros & Thanatos? The narrator experiences the woman's sorrow, punishment, and fear and feels the heat and sand against her cheek. As the Egyptian woman's life ends, the narrator is returned to her own "reality.“ Death from sexuality… perhaps this is why the narrator rejects the images?
7	"The narrator of the story" The narrator of the story, along with Chopin, rejects this "magic." The narrator, looking at the remaining cigarettes which could lead her into other such experiences, wonders "what other visions they might hold for me" but, taking the cigarettes in her hand, she "crumple[s] them" (71). The story ends with the enigmatic phrase "a little the worse for a dream" (71).
8	Chopin, too rejects the magic This is where Chopin's brush with magic through a new type of story telling ends. Chopin, like her narrator, does not want to explore the possibilities of "hopes fulfilled; a taste of rapture" (71) because of the consequences of rejecting the accepted order of her life. If she strays too far from "traditional" narrative she, as a woman writer, will not be considered serious. Her "magic" elements would be seen as Sensationalistic fluff. She, like her narrator, has been disturbed by a dream.