Women Deserve Independence and Choice Too “The Story of an Hour” was author Kate Chopin’s way of showing the world how women felt with no independence or ability to make decisions on their own that dealt with issues such as marital status by showing Mrs. Louise Mallard’s emotions after learning about the loss of her husband. The late 1800’s didn't provide much freedom in any aspect of their life when it came to owning a house, living on their own, or earning money of their own. Chopin took the idea of how women felt and created the story of a young Mrs. Mallard and her journey in what Mr. Mallard’s death was going to bring her. As soon as Louise Mallard heard of the loss of her husband, she felt a great deal of shock in knowing he was gone. Mrs. Mallard sat “quite motionless” in her chair, the …show more content…
Louise felt such a sadness by the loss because she knew she was loosing a very kind, gentle, and loving man who never did any harm to her; she just felt a lack of her own personality and freedom while with him. Chopin’s biggest point in showing the tenderness of Mr. Mallard proved men weren't bad people, but under the circumstances women were in they couldn't be happy within the marriages they had been placed in. To emphasize that idea, Chopin explains Mrs. Mallard finding a type of relief in knowing she will be free and would have “years to come that belong to her” and nobody else could tell her how to live her life (Chopin 2). Louise knew for the first time in her life she could be an independent women who no longer has to listen to what a man has to say with where she has to live or what she has to do with the money earned. The idea of a woman being able to make choices like these was unheard of when a woman was in a marriage, and that is what Chopin tried to shed a light on for the world to see. Chopin wanted it to be known that women have the ability to make their own choices for the betterment of themselves and don't need
Story of an Hour – A Big Story in a Small Space. Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" tells the story of a woman trapped in a repressive marriage, who desperately wants to escape. She is given that chance, quite by accident, and the story tells of the hour in which this freedom is given to her. The story is very short (only two pages), so is interesting to look at as a minimalist piece of literature, and the surprise ending offers an opportunity to look at Chopin's use of foreshadowing.
Women should be powerful, beautiful and intelligence. Nevertheless, women in the eighteenth century were portrayed as servants did not have any say in anything just like the story of an hour by Kate Chopin, where even in a good marriage you could not do the things you wanted to do. What if their husbands died what would come of them? How would they feel? And the irony of gaining freedom but losing everything?
Kate Chopin in her short story, “The Story of an Hour” depicts the tale of an ailing woman, and the emotions that manifest upon being told that her husband was believed to be killed in a railroad accident. Chopin demonstrates the theme of oppression of women, and how this forces women to become victims of their own repressed desires. The writer utilizes an omnipresent narrator that identifies the internal thoughts of Louise Mallard. Chopin illustrates her theme with the use of figurative language, setting, and irony.
Freedom is one of the most powerful words in the world because of the feeling it gives people. This idea is evident in Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour.” In the story, readers witness the effect freedom can have when the main character, Louise, finds out her husband had passed away. The story begins when Louise’s sister informs her that her husband had been in a terrible accident and he was dead. Once she gets over the immediate shock, she finds herself overwhelmed with joy because she was free to live her life for herself and not her husband. At the end of the story, her husband walks through the front door, and Louise has a heart attack and dies. In the story "The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin reveals the power of freedom through the use of diction, point of view, and setting.
Kate Chopin creates Louise Mallard as a character in the nineteenth century who experiences conflicting emotions regarding to her marriage. In her writing, Chopin does not mention anything bad about Louise’s husband, Brently Mallard. In fact, the text suggests that Brently is a good husband to Louise and their relationship is not a problem. This is why when Mrs. Mallard receives the news that her husband is on the list of people who were killed in a train crash, she grieves. She isolates herself in her room, stares out an open window, and then involuntarily begins to feel emotions other than sadness and devastation. Feelings of joy and freedom consume her and she becomes internally conflicted. Chopin does much in the text to show that Louise is not a horrible and egotistic person for feeling happiness at the death of her husban...
Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour. Kate Chopin was a Victorian writer whose writing manifests her life experiences. She was not happy with the principles of the time, because women had fewer rights, and they were not considered equal to men. Afraid of segregation from society, people lived in a hypocritical world full of lies; moreover, Kate Chopin was not afraid of segregation, and used her writing as a weapon against oppression of the soul.
Louise Mallard husband just past away from a tragic accident. Her sister, Josephine, and friend Richard was there to mention the sad news. They had to break this story to her as soft as possible. "...Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death." (Chopin 01) She wept the death of her husband and fell to her surprise the greatness of her freedom.
Kate Chopin's story, "The Story of an Hour", focuses on an 1890's young woman, Louise Mallard. She experienced a profound emotional change after she hears her husband's "death" and her life ends with her tragic discovery that he is actually alive. In this story, the author uses various techniques-settings, symbolism and irony- to demonstrate and develop the theme: Freedom is more important than love. Chopin uses settings to convey particular moods, character qualities and features of theme. Firstly, the author uses time setting to reveal Louise' inner desire and her restrictions.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” focuses on a woman named Louise Mallard and her reaction to finding out about her husband’s death. The descriptions that the author uses in the story have significance in the plot because they foreshadow the ending.
The Story of an Hour is based on a wife that received some bad news about her husband that were killed in a railroad disaster and found out later that the same day he was still alive. The Story of an Hour is written by Kate Chopin, she is an American author that was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850 later died in 1904. She was the only child out of five live past the age of twenty five.
In Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" the author portrays patriarchal oppression in the institution of marriage by telling the story of one fateful hour in the life of a married woman. Analyzing the work through feminist criticism, one can see the implications of masculine discourse.
Setting exists in every form of fiction, representing elements of time, place, and social context throughout the work. These elements can create particular moods, character qualities, or features of theme. Throughout Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," differing amounts and types of the setting are revealed as the plot develops. This story deals with a young woman's emotional state as she discovers her own independence in her husband's death, then her "tragic" discovery that he is actually alive. The constituents of setting reveal certain characteristics about the main character, Louise Mallard, and are functionally important to the story structure. The entire action takes place in the springtime of a year in the 1890s, in the timeframe of about an hour, in a house belonging to the Mallards. All of these aspects of setting become extremely relevant and significant as the meaning of the story unfolds.
The Symbolism of Louise’s death at the end of this short story shows how tragically someone’s life can be when deprived of self-expression. Some critics like Madonne Miner states that “upon seeing her husband. Louse suffers a heart attack and dies”(Cunningham) others like Emily Toth “argues that Louise must die at the end of “The Story of an Hour” because the idea that she could live on as a widow glad of her husband’s death would have been ‘much too radical, far too threatening’ for editors and readers in the 1890s” (Cunningham). Chopin is such a gifted writer that she ends the story with a ironic sentence, “when the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills” (1203) that can be interpreted as she died from overwhelming joy upon seeing her husband alive or that she died of disappointment upon realizing that her fantasized freedom would no longer be possible. With one sentence Chopin is able to fulfill both the expectation of the patriarch society, that Louise deserved dying for rejoicing in her husband death and also satisfy the feminist audience with the possibility that she rather dies than continue to live a repressed
A Feminist Perspective on Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour. Kate Chopin employs the tool of irony in "The Story of an Hour" to carefully convey the problem inherent in women's unequal role in marital relationships. Chopin develops a careful plot in order to demonstrate this idea, one not socially acceptable at the end of the 19th century, and unfortunately, a concept that still does not appreciate widespread acceptance today, 100 years later as we near the end of the 20th century. Louise Mallard's death, foreshadowed in the initial line "Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble" takes on quite a different meaning when the plot twists and the context of her sudden death is presented unexpectedly, not upon her shock at her husband's death, but instead in her inability to endure the fact that he lives.
Kate Chopin, actual birth name Katherine O'Flaherty, was an author in America of novels and short stories. The female author was born on February 8, 1850, and passed away August 22, 1904. Chopin then started writing stories in 1892 to 1895 for both children and adults. She is now considered to be one of the first feminist authors of the 20th century.