Kate Chopin 's The Story Of An Hour

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

Women have strived hard to gain the treatment as men. In the workplace, society, and even at home women were treated as second class to men. In Kate Chopin’s, The Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard loses her husband, but her reaction is not what is expected from the reader. Mrs. Mallard’s reaction was from the treatment of her husband and now she finally felt free.

Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor discusses many topics and insights that can be found in literature. Foster explains how each are used and the purposes they serve while providing numerous examples. Many of Foster’s insights can be found in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” which was written during a time in history when women were often restricted by society and marriage. The story speaks of a woman who felt freed from the burden of marriage when she thought her husband died, only to die the moment she realized he was actually alive. Foster’s insights about weather, heart disease, and flight that are evident in “The Story of An Hour” greatly influence the story’s interpretation in several ways.

The way she wrote “The Story of an Hour” highlighted the struggles of women. “I would like to argue that Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” illustrates a paradigm of existential struggle” (Podlasli-Labrenz 68). Her writing style accredits to Mrs. Mallard and the life that women lived during this time. “Mrs. Mallard’s example explicitly conveys two important concepts about life: it is very difficult for human beings to adjust to their personal freedom and the sense of responsibility it implies” (Podlasli-Labrenz 68). Through “The Story of an Hour”, Chopin shows the lack of freedom women had.

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.

Mallard learns of her husband's death, she realizes that he will no longer be there to repress her; there will be no one to direct her will. “`Free! Body and soul free!`” she kept whispering” (Chopin, 163 Line 16). Mrs. Mallard knows that from now on she can live for herself and no one else, that "all sort of days…would be her own" (paragraph 19). Mrs. Mallard now looks forward to a long life. She had previously dreaded the years ahead spent under the thumb of her husband. “And yet she had loved him, sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self- assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” (Chopin, 163 Line 15). It is this “possession of self-assertion” that strongly urges her to oversee all the strongest and hardest conventions to recognize the true nature of her being, and it is also this “possession of self-assertion” that enables her to make her own decisions for her independence, for her new free life and for her imagined bright

During the late 1800s, women were expected to be at home wives that only cooked, cleaned the house, and took care of the children. Mrs. Wright from “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell and Mrs. Mallard from “A Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin both felt miserably trapped because of this expectation of women. At this time, any woman or man who spoke against this expected code of conduct were seen as outcasts. A woman could never get a job during this time period, and any man who tried to support a woman getting a job would lose his social standing. In these two works, the authors expressed how the main character, not only wanted freedom, but also accomplished that desired freedom. Kate Chopin’s “A Story of an Hour” and Susan Glaspell “Trifles” both expressed similarities and differences in tone, symbolism, and irony.

Kate Chopin `s “Story of an Hour” looks into the oppression of women in marriages. Mrs. Mallard`s fragile condition of her heart is taken in great consideration when her sister breaks the tragic news of her husband`s death. She went away to her room and stubbornly requested to be alone. She flopped onto an armchair by a window and sunk into the deep cushion of the seat to analyze the haunting reality of abandonment. Out the window, Mrs. Mallard saw what appears to be a new spring life.

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin is a short yet complex story, describing Mrs Mallard’s feelings. It focuses on the unfolding emotional state of Mrs Mallard after the news of her husbands death, and has overflowing symbolism and imagery. It is an impressive literary piece that touches the readers’ feelings and mind and allows the reader to have a connection to Mrs Mallard’s emotional process. Although the story is short, it is complete with each word carrying deep sense and meaning. It is written in the 19th century, a time that had highly restrictive gender roles that forbade women to live as they saw fit. Mrs Mallard experiences something not everyone during this time has the luck to have; the happiness of freedom that the reader only

In order for women to acquire freedom and gain power, they must fight and emancipate every oppression they suffer from to prove that the once oppressed can and will become among the most successful. In her short fictional story entitled “The Story of an Hour”, author Kate Chopin gives the tragic death of Mrs. Mallard’s husband an ironic context in which she deals with moving from oppression to freedom. She brilliantly intertwines her themes with symbolism and situational irony to reflect the historical impact for her gender of the time.

When Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour,” was written in 1894, Kate Chopin was living with her family in Louisiana and was a very independent woman. Throughout the world during this time, women were known to be considered their husband’s property and had to live for their husbands and not themselves. In this story, Chopin seems to explain the feelings wives had about their husbands. Based on this, the character of Mrs. Mallard may have been married to her husband but didn’t actually enjoy being with him. So, when he dies, she feels free to finally live for herself. The open window helps to express the feelings of a new life Mrs. Mallard sees in her future. Throughout Chopin’s story, the symbolic representation of the open window plays a major role in illustrating the freedom Mrs. Mallard began to feel in the story

In “The Story of an Hour”, the author Kate Chopin Presents an unusual marriage. Louise Mallard, the protagonist of this short story experiences a sense of relief and happiness when she is informed that her husband has passed away due to a train wreck. However, when she discovers that Mr. Mallard is alive she feels all chances of being free from this marriage have faded away. Learning that her husband had not passed away from the tragic train wreck that was revealed to her was so much of a disappointment it kills her. Published in the 1800’s

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” she had a lead female character who, at this time, was considered to be controversial. In America at this time, women were not to have a voice of their own and for the lead character to have her own voice and who defies the male dominance of the 19th century. It was uncommon for a women of the 19th century to find joy in finding out that her husband was suddenly killed. The lines “Free! Body and soul free!” (Paragraph 14) suggest that she felt trapped being with her husband and now that he’s dead she’s finally free. This is something that I’m sure many American women in this time period felt.

I read the book called The Story of an Hour, and in that story the main character Kate Chopin sheds goodness in one hour of Mrs. Mallard’s life. She used the theme of secretly being an unhappy wife with a bad heart, to shed happiness on the journey of feelings Mrs. Mallard spends the entire hour to compare how her husband’s death is exactly as her own’s death. From when at that moment “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (pg. 555) to the most shocking moment that stopped her heart when she finds after all this time he is alive and well, her emotions and thoughts are expressed with this fresh and new perspective she has of the entire world. In that very moment she told her self in a whisper like voice “free!

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin describes an hour in the life of an oppressed woman bound by marriage in the nineteenth century. It is only when Mrs. Mallard’s husband dies in a sudden railroad accident that she realizes she is no longer tied together by the ropes of man. At first she is shocked and horrified by the tragedy, for she did say “she had loved him – sometimes” (Chopin). However, once the tears were wept, a new bountiful life of freedom was now in the eyes of Mrs. Mallard. Chopin uses imagery, third person omniscient point of view, and concepts of relief and joy in “The Story of an Hour” to convey the true feelings of Mrs. Mallard as she is freed from the strenuous and unjust oppression of women due to society’s expectation of gender roles.