Struggles for Release

     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”.

Kate Chopin is known for being criticized for empowering the subject of female sexuality and independence. In Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, it is placed in a time where men were known as being the head of the household while women were only in charge of raising the children and caring for the home. In the 1890s, women didn’t have so much power to themselves compared to today’s society where female empowerment is frequently encouraged. Chopin’s story narrates a sequence of Mrs. Mallard’s emotions that goes within the motion of the story. As she overcomes the sudden death of her husband, her emotion of grief soon turns into the sudden feeling of freedom, later on emerging into a strong independent woman.

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.

In “The Story of an Hour”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and “Trifles”, the authors all question the institution of marriage through the emerging theme of the oppression of women. In each of these works, women are shown trapped in confining marriages. While marriage is supposed to be seen as one of the most beautiful and perfect sanctities life has to offer, these authors portray it as more of a bittersweet agony that women are forced to endure. Chopin, Gilman, and Glaspell use a combination of symbolism and perspective in their literature to bring about this theme of female oppression. With this theme, the authors cause the readers to take a more feminist perspective and question the institution of marriage through the eye of the average housewife of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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.

Many decades and centuries ago, most women were mere figures in the eyes of society. Women were seen but not heard. Over time however, women have came out of the darkness and into the spotlight more than ever. Women today have made major impacts in all social statuses, such as in the homes, businesses, and in higher levels of organizations. One of the many women that helped women to get to this place in this era, was Kate Chopin.

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 late 1800s was a time period in American history marked by increased immigration, industrialization, territorial expansion, urbanization, and political activism. In regards to political activism, the feminist movement grew as a result of major social, intellectual, political, economic, and cultural transformations that were occurring in American society. During this time period, women still couldn’t obtain an education because it was believed it would injure their brains; they couldn’t vote; they could be beat by their husbands; and they couldn’t hold property. Women were viewed as emotionally and physically weak, a reason that men used to justify the subjugation of women and their need for “protection” under an onerous marriage. In The Story of an Hour, through peculiar sentence structure, feministic themes, and irony, Kate Chopin portrays the resentment of women towards the oppressive institution of marriage through Mrs. Mallard’s joviality for her newly discovered freedom- a product of her husband’s assumed passing.

The society during Chopin’s time period was undergoing remarkable social changes in which the role of women, amongst other things, began to face a change. While America started progressing towards urbanization and industrialization, more women began to protest against their unequal social position. From society’s point of view, ideally, a woman’s place was at home. She was to maintain her role as a wife and a mother, while men would be in charge of secular affairs. Soon the concept of the “New Woman” came into being. In the 1890’s countless women’s organizations came together to demand an improvement of their living standards and get rid of inequality. The “New Woman […] rejected traditional stereotypes of woman as delicate, passive and domestic; she demanded, and began to move towards obtaining, education, careers, dress reform and suffrage.”

Kate Chopin’s "The Story of an Hour" written in 1984 is a story of a woman who, through the erroneously reported death of her husband, experienced true freedom. Both tragic and ironic, the story deals with the boundaries imposed on women by society in the nineteenth century. The author Kate Chopin, like the character in her story, had first-hand experience with the male-dominated society of that time and had experienced the death of her husband at a young age. The similarity between Kate Chopin and her heroine can only leave us to wonder how much of this story is fiction and how much is personal experience.

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

Life for middle-class American women in the late nineteenth century was mostly predetermined. Women married in their early twenties, had children, cared for their husbands and home, and had little to no rights in life or business. S.S. Jamil, author of “Emotions in THE STORY OF AN HOUR,” asserts that “in the patriarchal world of the nineteenth-century United States that Chopin depicts, a woman was not expected to engage in self-assertion” (216). Jamil explains that “the patriarchy of that time ‘mandated the complete dependence of wives on husbands,’ making marriage ‘a form of slavery’ ” (qtd. in Jamil 216). Marriage and motherhood were expected of every woman and unwed ladies were viewed as a problem and a threat to society. Divorce was legal in the United States during this time period, however it was very uncommon and often difficult to obtain. Lewis Leary, author of “Kate Chopin, Liberationist,” declares that Kate Chopin usually wrote about female characters “caged by convention or lured toward freedom which brings at one time happiness, at another disaster or rebuff” (1). In “A Pair of Silk Stockings” and “The Story of an Hour” Kate Chopin depicts three aspects in the lives of an average mother and wife living in late nineteenth century America: their traditional

Kate Chopin is known as one of the greatest feminist authors of her time. She grew up around independent, widowed women: her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. With her father’s death due to a train wreck, and her husband’s death from“swamp fever,” Chopin was left alone to support her six children. According to Nina Baym, the author of Chopin’s biography, influences from strong women in Chopin’s life led to why she wrote about desires, limited aspects of women’s lives, and how women began to challenge the male-dominated culture (550). A lack of men as chief figures in Chopin’s life prevented her from experiencing a tradition of submission by women to men. Additionally, many of Chopin’s works were influenced by realism and feminism.

At the end of 19th century, American society presented an ideology of patriarchy. Feminists struggle for the equality and discrimination against female. As feminist movement started, lots of female writers were explored. One of the most famous writers is Kate Chopin. Her works mostly present a theme of women pursue freedom and equality. “The Story Of An Hour” and “The Awakening” are her representative works. In these two works, Kate Chopin reveals how women lived under the oppression of male-dominated society, especially for women who got married. They were not financially independent and their freedom and rights were deprived. Therefore female were forced to be an “angle in the home”. Both challenge the preconception that women can only be a housekeeper and marriage is the only way out.

“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.