The Oppressive Marriage Of Louise Mallard

     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”.

Chopin's use of language effectively conveys the intensity of the emotions that overcome Louise. Repetition of the word "free" reveals the exaltation Louise experiences in being released from possession by her husband's will. The diction aptly portrays the significance, emotionally and physically, of Louise's transformation. Tumultuously, Louise's bosom, the seat of passion, rose and fell as the "monstrous joy" possessed her. As the elixir of life "courses" through her once weak heart, Louise's "pulses beat fast." When Louise's fancy runs "riot along those days ahead of her", the reader feels the excitement Louise feels. Through the image of Louise as a winged "goddess of Victory", her inner strength from triumph over repression becomes palpable. That strength is reaffirmed in Chopin's use of words that connote potency. Louise has a "clear and exalted perception" of herself.

In these paragraphs, the story's omniscient narrator takes us into Louise's mind. However, while the attitudes expressed are definitely Louise's there is no textual justification for also ascribing them to the narrator. Further, it would be a mistake to project them onto Chopin, for that would confuse narrator with author, a move that denies Chopin the full range of literary technique, and that would reduce this brilliant and subtle work of fiction to behind-the-scenes sermonizing.

Chopin employs the use of symbolism to further her theme by using Louise’s heart and its disease as key symbols. In the beginning of the short story, the author informs the audience that Louise “was afflicted with a heart trouble,” which caused her husband’s friend and her sister to try to tell her about the mining accident gently. Shockingly, after her worrying phase of initial grief, Louise becomes joyful and “her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.” Her sister was worried that she was stressing her

Louise Mallard is the protagonist of The Story of an Hour. The entire story is about her preservation. Chopin portrays Mrs. Mallard as a woman who is in deep suffering. She is not only suffering from a marriage she is not happy with, but she is also suffering from her medical condition. As if she had not suffered enough, she also puts a threat to her own life. We see this when Josephine is knocking on her door while she refuses to open it (Chopin). What is unknown to Josephine however is that her sister is in fact not suffering but savoring the moment.

This stereotype is negative, as if having emotions is a bad thing. However, it is the women’s emotions that alters the course of their stories. According to Jamil, Louise has been repressing her emotions for many years to avoid this stereotype and to please her husband. When she looks out the window and sees the spring weather, it causes her to feel joy for the first time in a long time. All of a sudden, a rush of emotion crashes over her, and she discovers her true self (Chopin 15). Jamil contends that emotions are an enormous part of who one is, and without them, life is far harder to endure. This is exactly what happens to Louise. When she thinks that her husband is dead, these emotions return, and she can be her true self (Chopin 15-16). However, Jamil explains that psychological health can affect physical health, and the effect of repressing herself for so long might be a direct cause of Louise’s heart troubles. When she allows herself to feel, her heart pounds strongly and surely, but when she sees her husband again, her heart troubles return. In that moment, she allows herself to succumb to her failing heart. It is a lack of emotion that kills her, not a

In the Deep South women were always known of as housewives. They were not given individual identities but rather a collective personality that all women possessed. Kate Chopin uses this theme of the individuality of women in all of her short stories and other writings. In The Story of An Hour, Chopin expresses this very well, using the character Louise Mallard. As in Chopin’s typical stories, Louise Mallard is a woman looking for her inner self and thinks she found it but goes through a hard time and attempts to overcome it while having a positive outlook on life. However, through her marriage she has been a patient, self-sacrificing, restless woman who believed she was given a chance to change her life around for the better, which

The “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is a short story about a woman who struggles with the oppression she experiences at the hands of her husband and her secret desire for independence. Louise Mallard didn’t realize how upset she was in her marriage until she found out about her husband’s death. She grieves for only a short period of time before mentally creating a new life for herself. This new life she envisions help her to see the silver lining in a tragic event. Chopin uses symbolism throughout the story to portray the theme of a quest for identity.

In the beginning of the story, we look at Louise Mallard from a bird's eye point of view. Louise is introduced as a devoted young wife who has been told the news of her husband's unfortunate death. When Chopin goes deeper into Louise's thoughts and feelings, they surprisingly contradict her initial description of her. I grew up in New Jersey my whole life. I lived in a huge house and everyone in

In 1940’s, women are expected to bear children, take care of their husband and children and keep the house clean. Chopin points out that Louise was happy to be free, body and soul free from her husband which shows that men believes women are considered weak. Louise seeks freedom from their marriage and she believes the only way to be free is the death of her husband. Women couldn't divorce their husbands and if the husband left the wife, he would get their children, home, money and all the women owned. But now, women can divorce

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.

`The Story of an Hour' was written in the nineteenth century and during this time highly restrictive gender roles forbade women to live as they saw fit. Kate Chopin presents in her story,

The author portrays a sad portrait of marriage, well Louise Mallard seems to had been struggling with her relationship but in my alternate conclusion I tried to show some other side of Mr. Mallard that was not very well portrayed by Chopin. The end of

Louise Mallard is Kate Chopin short story's protagonist. As noted earlier, Louise has a heart trouble during the time when her friends are to break her husband's death news to her. She reacts to the news despite her heart condition with a flood of grief. She quickly retreats to her room which indicates repressiveness which she is accustomed to. She briefly feels guilt out of experiencing joy at the freedom which is brought by the death of her husband. She is later faced with some complex mix of love and resentment emotions which are elicited by the thoughts of Brently's tenderness with absolute control of her life from her husband. She ultimately welcomes her independence which she has newly found and then takes on the newly self-possessed individual's life. This essay will emphasize my argument on how the story shows some aspect of mental change in character, and I will identify where this starts in the character, what happens to cause the change, what the change is, and the consequences of this change for the character.

Chopin uses common household features as a metaphor for Mrs. Mallard’s exclusion from the outside world. When she first learns of Brently’s death, Louise looks out an open window into an open square. Next, Chopin chooses to use treetops a quiver with new spring life as the first thing Louise sees prior to having her revelation, with a description of the delicious breath of rain in the air. Spring, of course is when things grow anew, and we know that water, as a a symbol cleanses ill pasts. This type of rich symbolism, returning to form, helped Chopin to make her story into simply “an hour”. As well, Chopin, makes use of parting clouds to provide Louise a blue sky, again, freedom like the