1.  Is Elizabeth Stock a "stock character"?  Explain your answer.
2. Write about the similarities between "Elizabeth Stock's One Story" and "A New England Nun."  Some things you may want to consider are:
   • plot
   • characters
   • themes
   • symbols
3.   What is Chopin's overall message?  Use textual evidence.

Stock Characters: are character types that occur repeatedly in a particular literary genre, and so are recognizable as part of the conventions of the form.  Even in realistic literary forms, the artistic success of a protagonist does not depend on wheter or not an author incorporates an established type, but on how well the typs is recreated as a convincing indivudal who fulfills his or her function in the overall plot.   For example, "Jane Austen's delightful Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1813) can be traced back through Restoration comedy to the type of intelligent, witty, and dauntless heroines in Shakepeare's romantic comedies" (Abrahms 298).