Independence In Kate Chopin's Essay

Commonly explored throughout her works, the idea of marriage inhibiting a woman’s freedom is the driving force behind Kate Chopin’s contextual objections to propriety. In particular, The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour” explore the lives of women seeking marital liberation and individuality. Mrs. Chopin, who was raised in a matriarchal household, expresses her opposition to the nineteenth century patriarchal society while using her personal experiences to exemplify her feminist views.

     Relationships seem to be the favorite subject of Kate Chopin’s stories. As Margaret Bauer suggests that Chopin is concerned with exploring the “dynamic interrelation between women and men, women and patriarchy, even women and women” (Bauer 146). In “The Story of an Hour” Chopin deals with the subject of marriage. She illustrates the influence of family alliance on individual freedom. According to Wohlpart,“The Story of an Hour” describes the journey of Mrs. Mallard against the Cult of True Womanhood as she slowly becomes aware of her own desires and thus of a feminine self that has long been suppressed”(Wohlpart 2). The Cult of True Womanhood in the XIX century included “purity” and “domesticity”. The former suggested that women must maintain their virtue. The latter – denied them their intellectual and professional capabilities (Papke 12). Being the victim of this Cult, Louise Mallard was a good example of a wife without “her own desires and feminine self”.

She uses a personal story to show that thinking less about the items you own can help in your everyday life, which helps show reasoning for giving up the heavy consumer

Chopin and Freeman lived in a time when men dominated women; a woman’s job was to marry, have a home, and raise children. Women were their husband’s property and law did not protect them if they were abused. (Plaza) Owning land, making financial decisions, and voting was among the many things women could not do. Freeman and Chopin both used their literary works to shed light on those subjects.

He will avoid buying clothes for himself so his children are able to have new clothes, and thus are not to seem impoverished and have his family face societal criticism. (20) The text clearly displays the father as a man who puts the needs of his family above all, however, in this he makes missteps and causes a disastrous financial pitfall. His spending is close to erratic, but shows love as his reasoning for this. When the father wins the ten-thousand dollars off the scratch-off, he discusses with his wife what to with it, and in this he turns down a possibility to pay off debts and allow a more secure financial position to give Lilly a splendid birthday. (15) All in all, this irrational fiscal behavior is the unfortunate side-effect of his drive to achieve a life of comfort and luxury for his family, and this is most clearly displayed in the Semplica Girls. The father purchases the Semplica Girls not out of interest for himself, but to help his daughter Lilly’s social perception, as they want her to “enter high school as confident young woman, feeling her family as good/affluent as any other family”. (24) He glances over the morality and the frivolous nature of the purchase to aid his daughter’s self-development.

I believe there are many points in the story that can be considered to be very relevant to the time it was written, expressing ideas of the approaching feminist movement and building up an awareness of what was happening to women and the forthcoming feminist movement. Many of the ideas that are expressed in the story concern both the women’s movement and an individual woman searching for her identity. Chopin demonstrates

Through the majority of the play, she feels tired and old, but also seems depressed that she can’t provide everything she could, causing her to give up on her own dreams and aspirations to better the family. She tries to do everything she can to help her family, even if it means she has to ‘work twenty hours a day in all the kitchens in Chicago’ and ‘strap her baby to her back’ if she has to, which proves how tireless she is in trying to help others achieve their dreams even if it does put all the weight on her

A Repressive Society For years, women have fought to get equal rights and create a society were women and men are treated the same way. During the 1800s, society viewed men as the person that was in charge of everything in the house, and he owned everything his wife had, while women were just an object that was supposed to obey and please her husband. Society during the 1800s caused Chopin to write about the issues that women were suffering to create a change. In the 1800s, society oppressed women in every aspect of their lives.

A woman's happiness and success during this era is often dependant on the male or husband of the marriage. During this era, Chopin displays to us in both her short stories "The Storm" and "The Story of an Hour" of how reliant women are in their relationship and lives. Women during this era were heavily looked down upon. They were looked so down upon that even the women themselves would look down on themselves resulting in more reliant on the men for their success in life. The women during this time era would be so reliant on men they would do much for the men despite whether they had loved him or not. Chopin many times wrote her short stories with women in marriage with men just for the benefits of living and success rather than love; a “vignettte exploring female desires that cannot be fulfilled in marriage, a common theme for Chopin.” (Brantley 1). During the 19th century, both men and women weren't seen as equal at all. Another push to being reliant on men is government rules and policies of men being the more stronger party of the marriage, relationship, or family. Men were seen as the “better” sex so then women were more reliant. Women had to depend on men to supply them in order to live a healthy lifestyle. Kate Chopin displays this highly in her two short stories as the two women seem really reliant on their male counterpart. The two women shows signs of weakness while their male counterpart were away.

A Woman Far Ahead of Her Time, by Ann Bail Howard, discusses the nature of the female characters in Kate Chopin’s novel’s and short stories. Howard suggests that the women in Chopin’s stories are longing for independence and feel torn between the feminine duties of a married woman and the freedom associated with self-reliance. Howard’s view is correct to a point, but Chopin’s female characters can be viewed as more radically feminist than Howard realizes. Rather than simply being torn between independent and dependant versions of her personality, “The Story of an Hour’s” Mrs. Mallard actually rejoices in her newfound freedom, and, in the culmination of the story, the position of the woman

When I read the part where she was hurrying to Nellie Simple Sweets, it got me thinking about how some people live with plenty of food, clothing, water and a roof over their head. People like me. Some people only have enough for that people with little money. Then there are people with more than enough money to live and give some away to charity - rich people. Everyone works to get money. I started thinking about this because when I read this part I knew that she must help her family by earning a little extra money for them. As I read on I found out that she even helped her father early in the morning with chores.

The main idea of this story is she wanted to be free to live her own life so badly that she

Although she is barely aware of her habit of cowering at her husband’s orders, the fact that she does not leave the coffeeshop shows how she is finally making her own decisions about how to spend her time and energy.

In the early 19th century the men of society were dominant, they were considered the caregivers and are responsible for the actions of their women. When a woman would get into trouble they would be sent to their husband or father to be punished. Kate Chopin unlike many women did not have a male figure in her life. As an author she still had to prove herself to society that she was a good writer. Most female writers of that century wrote under a male name so they could be published, Kate Chopin wanted to be known for her work. Mrs. Mallard searches for freedom within her life. She feels trapped in her marriage, and her husband's death is her ticket to freedom. Kate Chopin shows Mrs. Mallard’s desire for freedom through the use of irony.

At the beginning she has great problems with managing those children. But after she a short period of time she starts realizing that humans need more than just food and a place to sleep at. She really starts to develop a