A Woman of Sorrow

In The Story of an Hour, Katherine Chopin composed, “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.” (Chopin, 369) The main character of the story was joyful to live alone instead of living with her husband, whom she did not love. This quote is meaningful to the novelist because she lost a large portion of her family to death. Chopin was fearful she would have to live her life all alone in the Realism Literature Period. The Realism period in America lasted from about 1860-1890 and believed that characters were more vital than the setting, the writings were about everyday life, and the authors write about their personal experiences. The death of her father and mother ignited Kate’s passion for writing narratives.

Katherine Chopin’s father was killed in a railroad accident when she was only four years old. The death of her father was one of the instances that sparked her writing career. She used the notion of death and the thought of her father, whom she never got to be acquainted with, in a number of her stories. In The Story of an Hour, she transferred what she felt about the death of her father into the main character, Louise Mallard, from her short story. Mrs. Mallard had just lost her husband in a railroad accident and she knew that she didn’t adore him with all of her heart. Kate Chopin wrote taboo tales that challenged the principles of society. She wrote one of the most unnatural books in American Literature during the Realism Period, The Awakening. The people of the time were repelled of the ideas she wrote in the book, yet it is considered a great among the other books written in the same time period in today’s society. Another virtuous st...

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...er stories, her background, and her passion. What might happen next to spark the flame of an author?

Works Cited

• “Chopin, Kate O’flaherty.” Notable American Women, 1607-1950 (1971): Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. 7 May 2014.

• Reuben, Paul P. “Chapter 5: Late Nineteenth Century- American Realism- A Brief Introduction.” PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. 9 May 2014.

• Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Prentice Hall Literature. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005. 636-38. Print.

• Evans, Robert C. ""Literary Contexts In Short Stories: Kate Chopin's "The Story Of An Hour."" Literary Reference Center. EBSCO, 11 Nov. 2006. Web. 6 May 2014.

• Kunitz, Stanley, ed. "Kate Chopin." Biography Reference Bank. H.W. Wilson. Web. 7 May 2014.