Kate Chopin 's Story Of An Hour

"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin portrays one significant hour in the life of Mrs. Mallard. She has two problems at the beginning of the story. She was afflicted with heart trouble, and she has just been told her husband, Brently, was killed in an accident. Mrs. Mallard initially cannot contain her grief as “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.”(Chopin) She soon goes to her room to rest and contemplate this life altering news.

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” allows one to explore many ironic instances throughout the story, the main one in which a woman unpredictably feels free after her husband’s assumed death. Chopin uses Mrs. Mallard’s bizarre story to illustrate the struggles of reaching personal freedom and trying to be true to yourself to reach self-assertion while being a part of something else, like a marriage. In “The Story of an Hour” the main character, Mrs. Mallard, celebrates the death of her husband, yet Chopin uses several ironic situations and certain symbols to criticize the behavior of Mrs. Mallard during the time of her “loving” husband’s assumed death.

In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the author depicts how someone can be trapped in an unproductive and unsatisfying reality because of other’s thoughtlessness, exploitation, and domination. When combined with the contemporary society’s belief, presumably the later half of the 19th century, a further understanding of Chopin’s thoughts and feelings can be realized. Mrs. Louise Mallard, the victim and messenger of this story, is the image of such a person. Her relationship with her husband is so oppressive and limiting that even death is considered a reasonable means of escape. The condition of life for Mrs. Mallard is terrible, yet for some reason she doesn’t seem to come to the full

In the past many decades the definition of what a marriage means changed dramatically in some areas. For the author of both stories, Kate Chopin, she wanted the reader to get something out of the story. She likes to explore all types of themes in her stories such as, racism, the roles of women, and adultery. With these themes and messages she struggled to have most of her stories published. In many of her stories she passed along these messages through the manner of a marriage. In her short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “Desiree 's Baby” she showed just how different marriages could be as well as how similar they can be. Chopin portrays the lives of the main characters, Louise Mallard from “The Story of An Hour” and Desiree Aubigny

     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”.

In Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," there is much hatred. The first hatred detected is in the way that Louise reacts to the news of the death of her husband, Mr. Mallard. Before Louise's reaction is revealed, Chopin turns to how the widow feels by describing the world according to her outlook of it after the bad news. Louise is said to "not hear the story as many women have heard the same." Rather, she accepts it and goes to her room to be alone. Now the person reading starts to see the world through Louise's eyes, a world full of new life.

Kate Chopin’s short stories testify to display to the readers her viewpoints about love, sex and marriage that one is not usually aware of. These three topics all tied together. Typically, it’s easy to think that when you love someone you get married to them. You only commit yourself to them and no one else. Of course not all marriages work out but that’s life. In two particular short stories though, it establishes the struggle for woman around the 1800’s. Kate Chopin’s “The story of an Hour” and “The Storm” demonstrates the dark side of love, sex, and marriage.

Kate Chopin’s stories "Desiree's Baby," "The Story of an Hour," "At the 'Cadian Ball," and "A Pair of Silk Stockings," all were written during the 19th century. They all took place in Louisiana, the place where Kate Chopin herself lived with her husband, and her six children. All four of Kate Chopin’s stories are about feminism. For instance, they all talk about women understanding their feminism and their sexuality or how women are experiencing motherhood. Chopin’s stories also focus on women’s rebellion against their conformities. For instance, they rebel against their social customs that limit their possibilities in life, because in the time when Chopin’s stories were written, women’s rights were limited to very little.

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

Kate Chopin was born in 1851 in St Louis, Missouri. She graduated the Sacred Heart Convent and married Oscar Chopin after graduation. Together with her husband she moved to Natchitoches Parish, which would serve as one of the settings of her future stories (Stephenson 111). Chopin’s writing career began in 1882 with the death of her husband, when she struggling financially had to work in order to earn for her living. That made her really independent and the pattern of woman as an artist-outsider will later be present in her stories. Writing in the period of immense transmogrification of social order, which influenced her way of writing and defined the selection of themes mentioned in her stories. The pre-capitalist slavery based economy was being substituted with the industrialized economy based on the new class system retaining, however, large class of workers and preserving overall women’s subordination. Depicting the South, Chopin, encountering the rapid change in society, depicts women that defy the old

In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, the images of locks and doors created the idea of change in power. It begins when Louise learns of her husband's death and retreats to her room, closing and locking her door. Outside the door her sister, Josephine, who has been taking “great care,”(para 1) of Louise, is “kneeling”(para. 15), begging for admittance. This scene of Josephine kneeling and begging before the locked door demonstrates the change in power; originally Josephine was in charge of Louise but this scene indicates the change in power, giving Louise control over Josephine. In the paragraph before Louise dies someone is heard unlock, and opening the front door “with a latchkey”(para. 19).

Feminist American author, Kate Chopin, is known for her stories with strong and daring female lead stories. Her common themes display women, femininity, marriage, liberation, oppression, and perseverance. The Louisiana based novelist famous works started the feminist movement. Chopin’s stories The Story of an Hour and The Storm have many similarities and differences as do the majority of her work. The main characters, Calixta and Mrs. Mallard, both portray an odd attitude towards marriage.

Kate Chopin is known as one of the most unique and outspoken author of the late nineteenth century. Some background information on the author Kate Chopin is that she was born as Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1851 and moved to New Orleans with her husband, Oscar Chopin, in 1870. Kate wrote many popular short stories such as The Awakening, A Night in Acadie, and The Story of an Hour. The characters in these short stories she wrote would usually target feminist readers (555). The stories she would write usually scandalized her readers because of the portrayal of female sexuality in her characters. To this day, Chopin’s stories still provokes intense discussions between people about her female characters (555). Kate Chopin provides

Don’t be quick to jump to conclusions, not everything is what it appears to be. Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour” is a great representation of this. Chopin’s story is about the thoughts of a woman named Louise Mallard, after she is told that her husband has died in an accident. The use of an omniscient third-person narrator helps the reader understand what all the characters are thinking. The setting correlates the title and the duration of the story, all events in the story took place within an hour. The irony adds depth to the story, in the beginning Louise thinks her husband has died, but then, she dies herself in the end. Chopin’s use of narration, setting, and irony clearly summarizes the

At the beginning of Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour” Mrs. Mallard, suffers severe heart problems. Because of her heart condition, great care is taken when her sister decides to inform her of the tragic demise of her husband. When considering Mrs. Mallards troubled heart, her ailments are due to emotional problems she has encountered over a period of time; she is expected to be submissive, and she is not able to live for herself nor be free. Considering, she married at a young age, she has never had the opportunity to live or be free; thus, any emotional problems remained subdued.