The Revolt Of Mother By Mary E. Wilkins

Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence by Carol Berkin is a non-fictional expository book about changing women's roles before, during, and after the war. It surrounds various positions of not only White American women but, African American/slave women, distinguished, poor and Native American Women, as well as British women. It first covers pre-war norms, then looks at how the war affected women, and how women affected the war. It looks at various aspects of society, patriot and loyalist points of view, and the impact on slaves and Native Americans.

The writing of Revolutionary Mothers requires many sources to help emphasize the importance of its content, and Carol Berkin did just that. When reading Revolutionary Mothers you begin to see quotes and references from many sources included in each chapter. The sources that Carol Berkin used to write the book include journals, diaries, articles and newspapers, letters, and other books. These sources are about both women in during the colonial and Revolutionary times and the Revolutionary war in general. Carol Berkin did an exquisite job researching for her book, often citing at least twelve reliable sources for each chapter. Though she used many sources for writing her book, she did not use very many maps or pictures. She placed an illustration, depicting each topic, at the beginning of every chapter, with no maps, pictures, or other illustrations. Although she used few pictures or maps, she captured the reader’s imagination by her depictive descriptions making her book seem to be a short historical-fiction novel telling the journeys that different women took in the Revolutionary War era, making it unnecessary to use abundance of pictures, maps, or illustrations.

Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour” and Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” are similar pieces of literary work. Both stories offer a revealing glimpse of extremely unhappy marriages due to being forced into stereotypical roles. Both stories portray women, who are trapped in their marriages and trapped in their socially expected matriarchal characters. They are identified by their role as a wife and mother.

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.

‘The Mother’ is an allusion to ‘The Soldier’, which glorifies war and the death of soldiers. ‘The Mother’ is the complete opposite, imparting the horrible realities of war, creating a very melancholy and sombre tone.

When the notorious topic of women’s role in society comes to mind writers like Kate Chopin and Mary Wilkins Freeman break the norms of how women in America were imagined to be through different cultures and regions. In both Kate Chopin’s and Mary Wilkins Freeman’s time period women are portrayed as an ample servant to their husbands. Together the texts show how the controlled understanding of the nineteenth century society, had on women. At that time of these writers, people were restrictive about the viewpoint of women’s place in society. Women could not really do much without their Husband or another male figure in their life , they really didn’t have a voice of their own. In the stories A New England Nun , Desiree’s Baby, The Story of an Hour, and The Storm, Mary and Kate have represented how this situation of the society affected women and their viewpoints about life and marriage.

Writings from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s often depict husbands as controlling. This would lead to the demise of their wives. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman the husband’s insistence upon control, leaves their wives longing for the freedom of simple expression. “The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” illustrates how the husband is the controlling figure in the marriage. The two short stories also expose how the oppression put on them by their husband leaves the women unfulfilled and unhappy with their lives.

Revolutionary Mothers is a book written in 2005 by Carol Berkin about women during the struggle for America’s independence. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in women’s history or Revolutionary American history. This book is new in the sense that it has the perspective of the women during the war and not only white women but also Native American women and African American women. She also wrote about the perspective of loyalists and patriots. Revolutionary Mothers was written so that people could learn more about the role women played in the American Revolution.

The short stories, “The Story of An Hour”, by Kate Chopin and “The Jury of Her Peers”, by Susan Glaspell compare two married women who live under the shadow of their husbands. Both of these stories were written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries during the time when women were treated unequally. Women had limited rights. For example, they could not vote, voice their opinion or work outside the home. Glaspell and Chopin were considered feminist writers who focus their writing on the struggle of women during the time when the Women’s Suffrage Movement was beginning; these short stories reflect women’s struggles under the control of men. Married women were responsible for taking care of the household, children and wifely duties while the husbands were responsible for consistently managing the title of “the breadwinner.” Married women were expected to be discreet and obedient to their husbands, which meant that the wives could not express their opinions because of society’s expectations of women. In the short stories, “The Story of An Hour”, by Kate Chopin and “The Jury of Her Peers”, by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Mallard and Mrs. Wright share a prominent similarity concerning the loss of their individual identity during marriage and realize that the death of their husbands allow them to regain their self-identity.-

In a male dominated society, women were believed to be fragile weaklings that depended on men in order to survive and find happiness. In fact, they were seen as nothing more than selfless wives and mothers. The seemingly “perfect wife” then, was characterized by her dutifulness and obedient demeanor. This notion of male supremacy was undoubtedly the predominant basis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rendered unable to voice their own opinions, women then turned to pen and paper as a way to communicate their thoughts. From this, arose the following pieces: Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour,” Emily Dickinson’s poem “She rose to His Requirement - dropt,” Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles, and Zora Neale Hurston’s novel

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.

The Story of an Hour is short, yet, contains important examples of gender roles in marriage. They are important because they represent how women felt married in the 19th century due to male dominance that manifested throughout marriages all over the world. In The Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard is a wife that is, at first, seen as distraught, because of her husband’s death. She starts to cry and run to her room, to soon be lifted with the joy that she is now free. It is clear that she felt trapped in the marriage and is now happy that there is no one controlling her any longer. Mrs. Mallard is a prime example of women in marriages in the 19th century, and even some today. Unfortunately, they have to experience sexism from their husbands. Women are dominated by men in marriage and are expected to acquire the stereotypical gender roles.

Chopin explores the stereotypical female role within her short “A Pair of Silk Stockings”. In her short story Chapin, an author who frequently wrote stories about gender roles and the importance of independent women, she uses Mrs. Summers as a stereotypical poor house wife. Mrs. Sommers forgot to feed herself, because she was too busy feeding the kids. (Chapin 1) This passages explains that the role of putting your children’s needs over yourself is a very prominent stereotype of a housewife.

Women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s had specific roles determined by the males who were dominant in their society. Women began to write stories which told their gender roles in that era. The authors of these stories lived in this time period and their stories reflect a lot of the traditional roles that were expected of them. The author’s purposes, were to tell about how marriage imprisoned women in this period of time. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s stories provide examples of the gender roles. Their reasoning of writing these stories was to call on women of this era to learn how to empower themselves in this society.