Freedom In Kate Chopin's Emancipation And The Story Of An Hour

The Importance of Freedom Freedom is a theme that is commonly seen all throughout literature. The word freedom is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as, “the quality or state of being free: as, the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action; liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another; the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from the power of another”. (Webster’s) Authors use this definition of freedom and apply it as a theme in their stories in many different ways. Freedom can be used to describe the prevention of it, as someone is being oppressed and held from freedom. Freedom could then be used to show the escape from the lack of freedom and highlight their newfound freedom.

Chopin was born February 8, 1851 and her father was killed in a train accident in 1855. The passing away of her father had a great affect on her mother and her attitude. Chopin highlights this change in her mother in her short story “The Story of an Hour”. Chopin got married when she was twenty years old and had five kids over ten years of being married. Living the life of a mother and woman during the 19th century angered Chopin, as woman at the time did not have as many rights or as much freedom as men. This lack of rights and freedom was a constant theme in her writings. In 1879, her husband passed away and left Chopin with five kids and a great amount of debt. The next year her mother passed away also and these two deaths greatly devastated Chapin. Chapin took losing the two closest people to her as a sense of freedom though, that other women were not allowed to enjoy at that time in history. In 1888 with her newfound freedom she began to write her short stories and used her experiences of three major deaths in her family to serve as examples in her stories.