Stylistic Devices

     In order to reveal the idea vividly and convincingly the author resorts to the following devices:
Lexical:
 Describing Aurelie’s life, Chopin uses zeugma: So she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog Ponto, and the negroes who lived in her cabins and worked her crops, and the fowls, a few cows, a couple of mules, her gun (with which she shot chicken-hawks), and her religion. Placing human beings, animals and inanimate objects in a row emphasizes how lonely she is.
    To describe the children’s first reaction to Mamzelle Aurelie, the writer uses the epithet “irresolute steps” and another epithet, based on metonymy “unwilling hand” (to my mind, it is based on metonymy, because not only his hand was unwilling at the moment, but the boy himself). The family then is described as “disconsolate” (also an epithet). On the contrary, when the mother returns, the epithet “beaming face” describes her emotions, and the epithet “sad disorder” shows how lonely it is again for Mamzelle Aurelie.
    Syntactical devices:
In order to describe the character’s lifestyle, the author uses parallel construction: “Mamzelle Aurelie had never thought of marrying. She had never been in love. At the age of twenty she had received a proposal, which she had promptly declined, and at the age of fifty she had not yet lived to regret it.”
    The vocabulary,  used by Kate Chopin, is mainly colloquial, as she tries to represent conversational speech of the characters. The usage of foreign words (sich, armoire, encore, dieu sait) contributed to the same aim. There also are some poetic words, elevated, hight-flown vocabulary, that helps to create beautiful images. Besides that, there are some attempts of formal language usage, namely, scientific vocabulary: “critically studying their botanical construction”, that refers to a child and therefore creates some humorous effect and also emphasizes the child’s natural curiosity.