Pozdnyshev's Self-Knowledge And The Limitations Of Narrative

The Russian attitude toward love during Chekhov’s time is very patriarchal and is considered normal to marry for practical reasons, parental pressures or other considerations rather than for love. The feelings that accompany love, such as passion and spirituality, are not a societal consideration and this institutional attitude toward human emotion is the catalyst for Chekhov’s story. When a person is deprived of love, he or she builds up a futility of life which consumes the human soul. In Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog”, the readers are placed in a setting where the main character Gurov, and his love interest Anna, are given the emotional freedom to feel love toward one another. This freedom is the driving force in the story

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.

     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 Chopin’s short story, she demonstrates how men in the late ninetieth and early twentieth century treated their wives more as possessions than individuals, thus when the protagonist Mrs. Mallard learns her husband Brently Mallard just unexpectedly died, she feels “free, free, free!” (15). Since, Chopin published this short story in 1894; women often got married while they were quite young and typically to men much older. Likewise, divorce was never usually an option for unhappy marriages. Subsequently, Mrs. Mallard appears unhappy in her marriage, after learning about her husband’s death, she pictures how much better her life is going to be, “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that persistence with which men and women believe they have the right to impose a private will upon a

Ivan Ilych’s marriage to Praskovya Fedorovna is not built on true love, instead it is built on Ivan Ilych once again, trying to fit in with society. To prove that Ivan Ilych did not get married based off true love the narrator says, “Ivan Ilych might have aspired to a more brilliant match, but even this was good. He had his salary, and she, he hoped, would have an equal income.” (Tolstoy) This quote proves that Ivan Ilych was conforming to society and he married his wife just because it was the right thing to do since everyone else was doing it which is shown when the narrator says “Ivan might have aspired to a more brilliant match” meaning that he was not completely satisfied with his wife. Ivan Ilych did not look at the deeper meaning of marriage, he only looked at the materialistic and physical things that came along with his wife which is why they both did not live a happy life together. When Ivan Ilych got ill the narrator says, “her husband had a dreadful temper and made her life miserable, she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself the more she hated her husband. She began to wish he would die” (Tolstoy). This expresses the hate that Praskovya Fedorovna felt towards her husband due to the fact that she realized Ivan Ilych never cared for her or her family and he only cared about his social status. Ivan Ilych was a bad husband because of his immorality and thus his wife is insurgent against him. Here,

Chopin addresses emotional freedom through small waves of fear and insecurity which are ironically surpasses by great waves of joy. When told about her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard “did not hear the story as many women heard the same, with paralyzed inability to accept its significance” (Chopin 65) instead she was immediately filled with grief. The idea of her husband being dead was not unbelievable, possibly because she had thought, or even fantasized about it before. Mrs.Mallard

Marriage is an important stage in people lives, for this is when someone has found someone to live the rest of their life with and to love. This is a general idea of marriage, for a study was done to see what University Students think the meaning of marriage and stated “Marriage, which includes the coupling of two people possessing different interests, desires and needs, is a special association given shape by social rules and laws and significantly affects individuals’ development and self-realizations … meeting both individuals’ biological, social, psychological and motivational needs, bringing new generations to world, gaining a place in society, the feelings of being safe and protected, the sense of cooperation, being confident about the future, feeling proud of each other” (Özyiğit 680). This shows what a group of people thinks about marriage, and the problem with the group that taken the survey were generally young people who have no idea what marriage is for they may not be married. Kate Chopin knowing how serious people take marriage poked fun at it with many of the stories she wrote during her time. Chopin’s stories would be about what people see as forbidden during a marriage such as the wife having an affair with someone and the wife truly not loving her husband. The short story “The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin story demonstrates the tyranny within some marriages which relates to current day marriages.

Thesis: In Kate Chopin's "The Storm" and "The Story of an Hour," the wives seem to share the foul qualities of selfishness, unfaithfulness and confusion.

Marital prejudices come to the forefront in Russian literature, proving evidentiary of masculine tradition and the notion that women are designed to be "tamed" through the institution of marriage. Tolstoy's personal prejudices against marriage persist, providing a warning against marriage for men of potential and influence. In War and Peace, Tolstoy utilizes Andrey to voice his criticisms of marriage. Likewise, he uses Natasha's

Kate Chopin is a renowned author of the twentieth century. She is famous for her short stories that were written in the late 1800’s. Most of her works were published in magazines at the time but were a posthumous success because of societal dissent. The beliefs and values exhibited in her works of literature are far ahead of their time by representing women’s desire for independence from being a homemaker. One of her most popular short stories, “Desiree’s Baby,” shows how women had no choice over their own fate and were bound by the will of their husbands during Chopin’s lifetime. It was not well received by the public until years after Chopin’s death because the story draws sympathetic feelings towards the situation in which the main character Desiree finds herself in. In “Desiree’s Baby,” Chopin uses symbolism and irony to present the message of how the innocent suffer unjustly as a result of judgmental attitudes; she does this through the main characters of Armand and Desiree.

In discussing content, like all great authors, Chopin use symbols and metaphor to allow us to look within the subtext of their works. And many of these symbols and metaphors work to build upon their style, heavily composed of irony. As these are discussed, the themes of the obligations of women in marriage and illusions of independence, will come forward.

4) a. Pozdnischeff takes so long to get married because ever since he was a child, he was raised on the ideal of the "perfect woman" and it took him thirty years to find her. He is drawn to her by her beauty, her "slender body" and her "curling hair." He later explains that it was only what she was wearing that was so "becoming to her" and that after a day spent with her, he desired to sleep with her. Pozdnischeff's parents lived happilly and always stayed true to one another giving him the ideal that domestic life is like that in all situations. He believed marriage would be happy forever. Pozdnischeff's honeymoon was "a period of uneasiness, of shame, of pity, and, above all, of

We will begin with an analysation of his family situation. Praskovya, his wife, had been a love constructed from the start of an economic and sociological expectation rather than that of a true courtship. The happiness therefore of the union was derived solely of a necessity to fulfill a desire on the part of others for a “success” of sorts, surely her desire as well. “Ivan Ilyich could have counted on a more illustrious match, but even this one was quite good. He had his salary, and her income, he hoped, would bring in an equal amount. (Tolstoy, 56)” Tolstoy goes on to make several remarks on the benevolent nature of the relationship between he and his wife. The arrival of his children creates no great marker in his life, and proves to be little more than a factor in his ever-lengthening retreat into his life of solitude and work.

away the remainder of their lives under their husband’s thumb. In Chopin’s time period, women

Just a few days before I had to do this essay, my mom shared a story with me. In the middle of a Spanish lesson, one of her students asked her a completely unrelated question: Why do Mexican children always wear frilly dresses and slippers to the supermarket, and why do the men always crowd in the back of pick-up trucks to go to work? Although some of the students thought it was funny, my mother, of course, couldn't pass up this opportunity to respond and teach a more important lesson, interestingly enough, about stereotypes. She reminded me of our trip to Mexico some time ago and related those experiences to her students.