Serpents often symbolize temptation in western literature. This is because Satan appears as a serpent in the Book of Genesis, entering the Garden of Eden and tempting Eve into eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the following passage, Chopin uses a simile to compare the stockings to serpents that glide through Mrs. Sommers's fingers:
[...] she went on feeling the soft, sheeny luxurious things—with both hands now, holding them up to see them glisten, and to feel them glide serpent-like through her fingers.
Mrs. Sommers becomes fully aware of how attractive the stockings seem and begins to play with them. The stockings are the first step in her hedonistic journey from shop to restaurant to theater. In a sense, their seductive silken texture causes her to fall from grace. On this particular day, she transforms (temporarily) from a mother who only ever thinks about her family's well-being to a woman driven by aesthetic and physical desires.
Not only do the stockings represent the temptations of luxury, but they also offer a momentary escape into a past in which Mrs. Sommers has "seen better days." Unlike Adam and Eve, Mrs. Sommers receives no explicit punishment after she succumbs to temptation. But she does recall the luxury of her distant past and the financial constraints of her present, and this recollection discourages her on the cable car back home. The subtle biblical simile also imbues this passage with a slightly moralizing tone and foreshadows the temptations present in the rest of the story.
Chopin uses similes to compare Mrs. Sommers to royalty twice in "A Pair of Silk Stockings." The first time occurs just after one of the store employees asks Mrs. Sommers if she'd like to take a look at the discounted silk stockings. As Mrs. Sommers pauses, the narrative uses a simile to compare her to someone inspecting a tiara:
She smiled, just as if she had been asked to inspect a tiara of diamonds with the ultimate view of purchasing it.
This simile subtly invites readers to view Mrs. Sommers as if she's a princess tasked with selecting something of great worth to wear to an important event. In reality, though, she's just doing some discount shopping, but the comparison illustrates just how radically luxurious it feels for Mrs. Sommers to enjoy a moment of shopping for herself instead of spending her money on her children.
A related simile appears in the restaurant when she tips a waiter:
She counted the money out to the waiter and left an extra coin on his tray, whereupon he bowed before her as before a princess of royal blood.
As Mrs. Sommers goes deeper and deeper into her fantasy, she imagines that other people view her as royalty. Of course, she does not literally think she is a princess. But she wishes to feel beautiful, and each purchase is an expression of that wish. She also wishes to feel affluent. These royal similes thus perfectly capture her (fleeting) feelings of beauty and decadence.
