When it comes to love there are many virtues that people look for in their significant others. Some people want their spouse to approve them, and some people want their spouses to vanish. The two stories “A Cup of Tea,” By Katherine Mansfield and “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin both highlight these two aspects that defines a relationship. Relationships have many complicated details about them, but when it comes to these two stories the relationships have a whole one-eighty degree turn. The two stories “A Cup of Tea,” by Katherine Mansfield and “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin present a topic about how a woman should be treated. Within “A Cup of Tea” the main protagonist, Rosemary, believes that her qualities and what she …show more content…
Both women in these stories help symbolize hope and a strive for something. Holding on to something that you feel very unpleasant about can make the relationship seem ill. In “The Story of an Hour” is believed that Miss Mallard holds onto her relationship with Bentley Mallard because she does not want to be alone. She will be with a man that she is not happy with just for the sole reason of not being alone. This may sound gruesome when I state this, but Miss Mallard finally got sick of it and she wanted to worst for her husband. The hope that she could get out of this exhausting relationship is what made her feel relieved in the end, and that is what she had hoped for. Within “A Cup of Tea” Rosemary strives for feeling beautiful in any way possible. There are many symbols in the story that help me come to this conclusion. The story bluntly says in the first line that Rosemary is not pretty. With the wealth of Rosemary she tries to cover up her blemishes with the prizes and treasure that money can buy. The possessions and treasures that she buys helps cover up what she actually looks like because of the money she has. Rosemary is striving to cover up that she is not the best looking woman by the way she purchases items that are classy. Both of these stories reflect that you need to strive for something and set a goal, so that in the end you are happy with
The “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and ‘”The Hand” by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette are similar in theme and setting. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and Kate Chopin create the theme of obligatory love and the unhappiness it entails. Both stories illustrate the concealed emotions many women feel in their marriage yet fail to express them. The two stories take place in a sacred room of the house and both transpire in a brief amount of time. The differences between the two stories are seen through the author’s choice of characters in each story. In “The story of an Hour” Kate Chopin involves other characters in Mrs. Mallard’s life, whereas, “The Hand” deals with marriage and togetherness and only involves the husband and wife. Symbolism is seen all throughout “The Hand” not so in ‘The Story of an Hour.” The similarities in “The Story of an Hour” and “The Hand” is portrayed in theme and setting. The differences are illustrated in the choice of characters involved in each story and the amount of symbolism depicted in the different stories.
Writing based on their own experiences, had it not been for the works of Susan Glaspell, Kate Chopin, and similar feminist authors of their time, we may not have seen a reform movement to improve gender roles in a culture in which women had been overshadowed by men. In The Story of an Hour, the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, is a young woman with a heart condition who learns of her husband’s untimely death in a railroad disaster. Instinctively weeping, as any woman is expected to do upon learning of her husband’s death, she retires to her room to be left alone so she may collect her thoughts. However, the thoughts she collects are somewhat unexpected. Louise is conflicted with the feelings and emotions that are “approaching to possess her.”
Historically, women have been treated as second class citizens. The Napoleonic Code stated that women were controlled by their husbands and cannot freely do their own will without the authority of their husband. This paper shows how this is evident in the "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin and " A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. In both stories, the use of literary elements such as foreshadowing, symbolism, and significant meaning of the titles are essential in bringing the reader to an unexpected and ironic conclusion.
a voice as they do today. For Mrs. Mallard in "Story of an Hour", it seems that it may be better to die, then to live in chains. For Mrs. Ames on the other hand, she found the man that a woman needs to connect with her physically to be happy.
William Shakespeare, a creative literary artist, impacted his audience with the essence of love. Based on his play, A Midsummer Nights Dream, Lysander a main character explicitly states, "The course of love never runs smooth," expressing an opinion easily relatable to the modern generation. The story of an hour, written by Kate Chopin, is another literary work that easily expresses the same theme. With this in mind, both works revolve around the aspect of love and it's challenges that some May or may not overcome. Love is much more than an emotion, it's another world, another life that overcomes oneself into something unknown.
The number of marriages that end in divorce in America is one out of every five; the number of marriages that end in death is about eight hundred thousand per year. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is the tale of a married woman who finds herself on an emotional rollercoaster after learning that her husband was killed in a train accident, only to have him walk through the door within the hour. At first, she mourns the loss of her husband. However, as she realizes the breadth of the freedom she now possesses, this sadness soon transforms into joy, and she emerges from her upstairs bedroom a changed woman. Then, when her husband unexpectedly walks through the front door, she is all at once overcome with a sense of grief, and she collapses on the foyer floor, unable to bear the thought of returning to her marriage. Chopin, a controversial author, explores the negative side of the construct of marriage. Maintaining one’s independence can, in fact, strengthen a marriage, by promoting equality within the marriage, bolstering one’s
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension is derived from men, society, and within a woman herself. Even though these stories were written during the 19th century when modern society treated women as second class citizens, in “The Storm” and “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin illustrates how feminine power manifests when the female characters are able to discover their freedom.
Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...
“The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin tells the fictional account of a woman who learns of her husband dying in a train crash and the ensuing hour after she is given that news. Within that hour, the protagonist Mrs. Mallard grieves over the loss of her husband, but also realizes a newfound freedom that she didn’t have being married. Chopin focuses on the theme of freedom, especially in terms of a woman’s role in marriage at the time the story was published (December 1894). In the short story “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin uses elements of the plot to evoke empathy and demonstrate how marriage affected a woman’s freedom in the late nineteenth century.
Kate Chopin, author of “The Story of an Hour” written in 1894 was the first author who emphasized strongly on femininity in her work. In the short story, Chopin writes about freedom and confinement Chopin is an atypical author who confronts feminist matter years before it was assumed. The time period that she wrote in women were advertised as a man’s property. The main idea in the short story is to illustrate that marriage confines women. In “The Story of an Hour” the author creates an intricate argument about freedom and confinement Mrs. Louise Mallard longing for freedom, but has been confined for so long freedom seems terrible. Mrs. Mallard wife of Brently Mallard instantly feels free when her husband dies. The reason she feels this way
Xuding Wang writes in her essay, Feminine Self-Assertion in “The Story of an Hour”, a strong defense for Kate Chopin’s classic work, “The Story of an Hour”. Wang provides powerful proof that one of the pioneering feminist writers had a genuine desire to push the issue of feminine inequality. Even decades later, Xuding Wang fights for the same ground as Kate Chopin before her. She focuses on critic Lawrence I. Berkove, who challenges that Louise Mallard is delusional with her personal feelings of freedom once she discovers the news that her husband has passed away. The story opens with the line “Knowing Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble” (Chopin). [1] Chopin uses allegory to describe
In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin presents the character of Mrs. Louis Mallard. She is an unhappy woman trapped in her discontented marriage. Unable to assert herself or extricate herself from the relationship, she endures it. The news of the presumed death of her husband comes as a great relief to her, and for a brief moment she experiences the joys of a liberated life from the repressed relationship with her husband. The relief, however, is short lived. The shock of seeing him alive is too much for her bear and she dies. The meaning of life and death take on opposite meaning for Mrs. Mallard in her marriage because she lacked the courage to stand up for herself.
As Chopin mentions, “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with shudder that life might be long”(497). Just the thought of having a long life in your marriage makes you shudder shows that Mrs. Mallard was not happy in her marriage. Mrs. Mallard was happy about living a long life once she accepted the fact of freedom once her husband died. As Cathryn Hunter mentions, “The serious and wide-ranging negative effects that relationship distress can have on individuals”(55). The relationship distress played a toll on Mrs. Mallard mainly because although she was sad that her husband death, she could not help but feel free.
The social view of love is not always how people perceive it to be. In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour,” Mrs. Mallard reacts to the idea of a forbidden joy of independence. Being inflicted with a heart condition, Ms. Mallard is introduced with heart breaking news of the death of her husband. Later Ms. Mallard while locked in her room mourns the death of her husband and realizes that she was fond of the idea that her husband is dead. However her husband later returns home safe and sound and Mrs. Mallard dies of a heart attack resulting in her death. Kate Chopin uses situational irony with Mrs. Mallard being happy after her husband's death celebrating her new sense of freedom. Kate Chopin
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.