Feminism

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Recommended: A Story of Hour by Kate Chopin

The situation of women in our society has always been a source of debate. The term feminism is required at the end of the 19th century to serve the collective aspiration of women to gender equality in a society hitherto subject to the rule of man. Historically, there are prejudices and acts about women that led to discrimination of these. In legal terms, as in the world of work and family, it is in the second half of the twentieth century that is affirmed and implemented new rights for women. From then on, it is not only in term of legal equality, but also equality of opportunity that raises itself the question of relations between men and women. I will be comparing and contrasting “You Leave Them” written by Mona Simpson with the short story composed by Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour.” Throughout these stories, both authors clearly express a common theme of feminism. By focusing my essay on the theme of feminism, I will first analyze the authors’ past experience and then associate how it contributes in both of their short stories. I will finish my essay by describing how authors respond to the absence of men’s vision.
To begin with, both women didn’t have the presence of their father. After researching on Simpson’s life, I was able to find that she as a young girl had her parents split up and lived with her mother. She moved to California with her. Going to California was an important step for her and her mother after her father abandoned the family. I think that this happens a lot and only women have the responsibility of the children despite the father is free to do what he wants to. In California, she found a kind of freedom that she didn’t have in the past. Mona wished to reunite with her father, which she did but he w...

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...al Society, Chopin expressed freedom as the "possession of self-assertion.
This lack of men’s vision of life impacts to take influences from other men. In Simpson’s story, there are some clear feminist ideas that she portrays in her stories, probably due to a lack of a prominent male figure in her life. The lack of a father figure really seems to be apparent, especially when she supposed "And who knows, maybe I'll meet someone tonight, you never know. And I'd hate to meet the right man when I had on the wrong shoe." I feel like she is just looking for a man to love and man to love her. In her life, Simpson had a brother, known as Steve Jobs that she met during her twentieth. I found it extremely interesting she is so closely related to Steve Jobs. According to a biography on Mona Simpson: “The pair, despite their long separation, developed a close bond as adults.”

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