The Portrayal of the Plight of Women by the Author, In Their Particular Period of Time Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour” and Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” are similar pieces of literary work. Both stories offer a revealing glimpse of extremely unhappy marriages due to being forced into stereotypical roles. Both stories portray women, who are trapped in their marriages and trapped in their socially expected matriarchal characters. They are identified by their role as a wife and mother. In "A Sorrowful Woman" the wife is depressed with her life, so much so, "The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again"(p.1). This wife and mother has come to detest her life, the sight of her family, …show more content…
In "The Story of an Hour" Chopin portrays marriage and the role and feelings of women in the 19th century as subordinate contributors to the husbands. The third word of the story is “Mrs.”, identifying the protagonist as a wife, defining her role and her life. She is also identified as weak and fragile. When her husband is killed in a train accident Mrs. Mallard cries, but for different reasons than would be expected. She is sad for her husband’s death, but, moreover, she is overcome with joy. For now she is free. No one recognizes her true emotions because women fall apart when their spouse dies; it’s required. Marriage is portrayed as a life sentence. "She said it over and over again under her breath: ‘free, free, free!' Her pulse beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body"(1). Mrs. Mallard was relieved that her husband died for she thought her sentence was over. When she realized that he was still alive, and therefore she was still committed to the marriage, she died from the shock and horror of being trapped.
In both stories, women were expected to keep house, cook, bear and rear children—but little more. Moreover, should a woman find work, employers generally discriminated against women by hiring them for menial jobs. Repression in both women may very well have been the reason for their ailments and certainly their deaths Though a weak heart and suicide might be a stretch, as to be caused by
In the psychological lens, the brain is separated into three different parts. The three parts are the superego, the ego, and the id. The superego is the way society expects you to react to different problems and situations. The ego is the conscious decisions that you make. The id is your unconscious desires.
Not only did these women not have a way to get out of their crisis, but they were also prohibited from being themselves and from doing what they want. In “A Sorrowful Woman,” the main character is exhausted from being “a wife and mother one too many times” (189). When her son says, “She’s tired of doing all our things again” (193), this tells us what her life was like. She was constantly feeling the stress of trying to be a housewife against her will, although she did have the ability to write and wasn’t given much of a chance to write. Only once in her life does she have a chance to write “mad and fanciful stories nobody could ever make up again, and a table full of love sonnets…”(192-193); that is before her death. This woman is in a tough predicament. While the person herself tells her to do whatever she wants to, the person that is affected by social expectations inside her tells her to do other things. She completely loses controls of herself. Even though she was unable to do things she wants, she still had to pretend as if she was the luckiest woman (189). In “The Story of an Hour,” on the other hand, Mrs. Mallard’s overwhelming joy when she received the news of her husband’s death indicated for how long and how much she wanted to be “Free, free, free!” (19). Only alone in her room could Mrs.
In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, Louise Mallard is caught in a cold marriage and a constrictive house. The same goes for Sarah Penn in Mary Wilkins Freeman “The Revolt of “Mother.’” Despite the fact that both stories share the topics of imprisonment and control, physically and inwardly, the ladies in the stories have diverse responses to their circumstances. Sarah battles the confinements without holding back, taking her opportunity, while Mrs. Mallard adopts a motionless strategy and is just liberated through the death of Mr. Mallard.
“The Story of an Hour” is a short story in which the author, Kate Chopin, presents an interesting view on women 's feeling in marriages. Louise Mallard is the main character of the story and rather than mourn her husband’s death, she fills with a confuzed joy as she feels freedom from her boring life. Once she finds out that her husband, Mr Brently, is still living, Mrs. Mallard’s heart explodes and she dies from sadness.While the idea that women can feel oppressed in marriages is most definitely true, in the story it does seem a little exaggerated. This is most likely because of Mrs. Mallard’s unnatural depression-like symptoms, as well as her failure to realize woman can be more than just wifes, even at her time.
By being written from the point of view of a woman, it shows how the gender roles and expectations really were to the woman herself. The woman felt as if she was held captive by her marriage, because her husband was in control of her life. He controlled whether she socialized or got to work. For that reason she began to slip deeper into depression, because of this captivity. The plot structure impacted the story greatly, because it allowed a view inside a woman’s life during that time period.
The narrator’s actions are considered as rebellious to the traditional gender roles such as thinking too much, has depression, being passive, and not taking care of the child. Not being presentable when the husband comes home is also a trait that a traditional female should not have. The wife is called the troubled women since she does not fit into society’s gender role. While making the wife feels even more miserable than before the sister is viewed as the good women in the family. Since the sister is the care-taker of the family and taking care of the child which is the job of the wife.
In the "Story of an Hour" written by Kate Chopin, the author portrays patriarchal oppression in the institution of marriage by telling the story of one fateful hour in the life of a married woman, named Louise Mallard. At the time of the story, society is ruled by patriarchal system where men held power and women are excluded from it. Women are dependent on their husband and are not expected to voice their concern or make their own decision. The story also shows a social situation of the times, a woman, a prisoner to her husband was mentally and psychologically strained due to the burden of social expectation once married. The circumstances that numb the genuine feelings of Louise Mallard came from the burden of marriage and constant duty
In the story of an hour, Kate Chopin has depicted a tone amongst many wives of the late nineteenth century. Women, by this time, were very far from the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution or the “Women’s Suffrage Movement.” What this explains is that women of this era are still being undermined by society, neither unequal nor independent from that of the voice of the masculine gender. This treatment towards women was a domestic one. Many betrothed women of this timeframe were unhappy in their marriages, due to a culture that shunned the idea of a free and empowered woman. The underlying meaning that Kate Chopin wanted to convey in The Story of an Hour, is that woman of the late nineteenth century were repressed, unhappy, and imprisoned in their marriages.
Looking at the early and late 19th century paintings, one can see that majority of them showed women and children in their respective roles. Motherhood was revered and something to be honored and commemorated. The women were seen only in the roles of wives, mothers and caretakers and society considered this their appropriate place. Women who were single were termed as 'spinsters ' and were not given the same status in society as married women. In the story of an hour, the author, Kate Chopin describes the emotions of a woman who is married and tied down to this oath for the rest of her life. The author uses the ways of the society during that time to construct a story that accurately reflects the feelings of majority of women of that
All three writings, “The Story of an Hour,” “A Sorrowful Woman” and “The Hand” portray the long led belief that women are obligated to carrying the burden’s of a household. The belief that they should surrender their own desires and needs to care for the needs of their families still lingers in society today. Similarly, the women are in a marriage they will not leave, bare the burden of submission, have a love and dislike for their spouses, and desire freedom from the imprisonment they feel in their life.
A critical feminist view of Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour focuses on female cruelty in the nineteenth century society and more specifically in marriages of the time. During that time period, women were owned by their husbands and had little to no control over their own lives, so in a sense women felt trapped inside of their marriages. The demonstration that is expressed in The Story of an Hour is the sense of freedom Louis Mallard experiences after she is aware of her husband’s death by a train accident. After Mrs. Mallard is told this expectantly tragic news, she goes off to her room alone, where one is predicted to believe she is going to grieve over her husband’s death.
“The Story of An Hour” focuses on sixty minutes in the life of a young nineteenth-century woman, Mrs. Mallard. Upon learning of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard experiences an epiphany about her future without a husband. Her life, due to heart problems, suddenly ends after she unexpectedly finds out her husband is actually alive. Mrs. Mallard’s actions cause the reader to cogitate a hidden meaning weaved into Kate‘s short story. Chopin had an idea that women felt confined in their marriages, and the idea is brought out through the protagonist’s initial reaction, excessive joy, and new perspective of the world following the upsetting news.
The ”Story of an hour” by Kate Chopin is a short story that takes place in the late 1800s. This short story is about Mrs. Mallard, a lady with diagnosed heart trouble, being told of her husbands death, and showing the way she interprets and reacts due to this lost. A theme that is present in this short story is the confinement’s of marriage. Kate Chopin uses the imagery of Mrs.Mallards mindset after the discovery of her husbands death, symbols such as that of Mrs. Mallards heart illness, and both the ironic situation and dramatic irony of Mrs. Mallards death at the sight of her husband to contribute to this subject on marriage as a whole. The author uses positive imagery for Mrs. Mallards reflection on the loss of her husband, something that would usually be projected in a negative connotation.
When first reading Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour," one may not typically be surprised at its ending, write it off as one of those creepy "back from the dead" horror stories and forget about it. There is more to this story than simply horror. The author is making a very strong, however subtle, statement towards humanity and women's rights. Through subtle symbolism, Kate Chopin shows how marriage is more like a confining role of servitude rather than a loving partnership.
In ‘The Story of an Hour’ the struggles and hardships of women in day to day life are conveyed. In ‘The Story of an Hour’, Chopin implies that marriage, even when