“I take you, to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.” These traditional wedding vows conjure up images of true love and unfailing commitment. Although this unconditional love is beautiful, it was not always a reality. This fact became evident within literature of the late eighteen hundreds. “The Storm” written by Kate Chopin, “An Adventure in Paris” by Guy De Maupassant, and “The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov, are all prominent short stories that portrayed dissatisfied women involved in loveless marriages. For these women, lack of fulfillment and the thrill of playing with fire, were the catalysts of their extramarital affairs.
Those who are unfaithful in their marriages equate an affair with thrills and passion. For the women in “An Adventure in Paris”, “The Storm”, and “The Lady with the Dog”, this notion held true. Collectively, these stories portrayed extramarital affairs, both deliberate and unplanned, that were filled with heat and infatuation. In “The Storm”, Calixta had not contemplated having an affair, yet she threw all caution to the wind upon seeing Alcee, her long lost lover. The thought of being intimate with an old flame excited Calixta, and she ultimately gave into Alcee’s temptation. Similarly to Calixta, Anna Sergeyevna of “The Lady with the Dog” was not deliberately searching for a trilling affair, but she definitely did not oppose one. Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, a charming womanizer, swept Anna off her feet and into bed. “There was an elusive charm in his appearance and disposition which attracted women” (Chekhov 285). This...
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... is absolutely beautiful, but has not always held true. In the late eighteenth century, literature depicted women and men who were very dissatisfied in their marriages. Specifically, “The Storm”, “An Adventure in Paris”, and “The Lady with the Dog” were all famous short stories that portrayed unfaithful women involved in unfulfilling marriages. Although their life stories were different, these women cheated for similar reasons of discontent, and the thrill of a passionate affair. With their literary works, Guy De Maupassant, Anton Chehkov, and Kate Chopin, proved marriages were not always accompanied with devoted spouses, and unfaithfulness was not unheard of.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Storm. Vol. Pages 95-99. 1898. Print.
Bausch, Richard, and R.V Cassil. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. New York, New York:
Norton, 2006. Print.
Bausch, Richard, and R. V. Cassill. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Print.
Marriage is an important theme in the stories Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. When someone hears the word “marriage”, he thinks of love and protection but Hurston and Chopin see that differently. According to them, women are trapped in their marriage and they don’t know how to get out of it so they use language devices to prove their points.
“Like a river flows so surely to the sea darling, so it goes some things are meant to be.” In literature there have been a copious amount of works that can be attributed to the theme of love and marriage. These works convey the thoughts and actions in which we as people handle every day, and are meant to depict how both love and marriage can effect one’s life. This theme is evident in both “The Storm” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman; both stories have the underlying theme of love and marriage, but are interpreted in different ways. Both in “The Storm” and in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the women are the main focus of the story. In “The Storm” you have Calixta, a seemingly happy married woman who cheats on her husband with an “old-time infatuation” during a storm, and then proceeds to go about the rest of her day as if nothing has happened when her husband and son return. Then you have “The Yellow Wallpaper” where the narrator—who remains nameless—is basically kept prisoner in her own house by her husband and eventually is driven to the point of insanity.
“The Storm” by Kate Chopin is a short story that touches on the controversial subject of adultery. The two characters Calixta and Alcee were both happily married. They reunited spontaneously during the midst of a severe storm, when old feelings resurfaced. Their actions out of lust were feelings they had long forgotten. Soon enough the storm had calmed, and the two parted ways; smiling back at each other they said their goodbyes. Their actions were without the intention of being deceitful, but rather uncontrollable. In the end it is ironic that the infidelity strengthened one marriage’s relationship and made the other character realize the importance of marriage through his wrong doings.
Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway both convey their ideas of love in their respective stories The Lady with the Pet Dog and Hills like White Elephants in different ways. However, their ideas are quite varying, and may be interpreted differently by each individual reader. In their own, unique way, both Chekhov and Hemingway evince what is; and what is not love. Upon proper contemplation, one may observe that Hemingway, although not stating explicitly what love is; the genius found in his story is that he gives a very robust example of what may be mistaken as love, although not being true love. On the other hand, Chekhov exposes love as a frame of mind that may only be achieved upon making the acquaintance of the “right person,” and not as an ideal that one may palpate at one instance, and at the another instance one may cease to feel; upon simple and conscious command of the brain. I agree with Hemingway’s view on love because it goes straight to the point of revealing some misconceptions of love.
Beauvoir’s thesis in The Married Woman revolves around women characterization and inferior nature oppressed by men in a marriage opening her piece comparing housework to “the torture of Sisyphus” (380). Using imagery and descriptive language, Beauvoir describes the expected duties of a women forced up by her husband as she is in “war against dust, stains, mud, and dirt she is fighting sin, wresting with Satan” (381). Beauvoir believes that the sanctity of marriage lies only in the males supremacy of women, as women are “temped—and the more so the greater pains she takes—to regard her work as an end in itself” (382). This comparison depicts marriage as a waste of life, rather than devoting “time and effort in such striving for originality and unique perfection” (382); the woman succumbs to marriage and housework. Beauvoir truly believed her ideology of marriage and lived her life accordingly to her death in 1986. Simone de Beauvoir’s account of marriage as scrupulous, demeaning, and “sadomasochistic” (381), repres...
In the end, readers are unsure whether to laugh or cry at the union of Carol and Howard, two people most undoubtedly not in love. Detailed character developments of the confused young adults combined with the brisk, businesslike tone used to describe this disastrous marriage effectively highlight the gap between marrying for love and marrying for ?reason.? As a piece written in the 1950s, when women still belonged to their husbands? households and marriages remained arranged for class and money?s sake, Gallant?s short story excerpt successfully utilizes fictional characters to point out a bigger picture: no human being ought to repress his or her own desires for love in exchange for just an adequate home and a tolerable spouse. May everyone find their own wild passions instead of merely settling for the security and banality of that ?Other Paris.?
Magill, Frank N. Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Vol. 6. Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 1993.
The period is the early 19th century; those involved and discussed in this essay are for the most part Russian gentry. Increasingly relaxed social mores in the “developed” world, including the greater freedom to choose to whom one gets married to as well as increased women’s sexual rights, were much more uncommon during the time that War and Peace takes place. Tolstoy, an outspoken critic of arranged marriages, uses the characters in his novel as a way of exploring the various types of love, and in general the interactions between men and women of the time. This essay will attempt to focus on these relationships in an effort to get a better idea of Tolstoy’s views on the proper roles that men and women should play as friends, lovers, or spouses. By exploring the male/female relationships among the noble families, a detailed picture of both the expectations and realms of acceptable behavior will be established.
Lady Chudleighs’s “To the Ladies” exhibits a remorseful stance on the concept of joining holy matrimony. Chudleigh’s usage of metaphoric context and condescending tone discloses her negative attitude towards the roles of a wife once she is married. It is evident that Mary Chudleigh represents the speaker of the poem and her writing serves a purpose to warn single women not go get married and a regretful choice to women who are.
Marriage can be seen as a subtle form of oppression, like many things which are dictated by social expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour, Louise Mallard finds herself in distress due to the event of her husband’s death that makes her question who she is as a person. The author cleverly uses this event to create the right atmosphere for Mrs. Mallard to fight against her own mind. As the short story progresses, we see that Mrs. Mallard moves forward with her new life and finds peace in her decision to live for herself. This shows that marriage too is another chain that holds oneself back. Not wanting to admit this to herself, Louise
While it has traditionally been men who have attached the "ball and chain" philosophy to marriage, Kate Chopin gave readers a woman’s view of how repressive and confining marriage can be for a woman, both spiritually and sexually. While many of her works incorporated the notion of women as repressed beings ready to erupt into a sexual a hurricane, none were as tempestuous as The Storm.
The short story “The Lady With the Dog”, by Anton Chekhov, is a fanatical love story depicting infidelity at its finest. This story demonstrates a deceptive nature that completely portrays a usual situation that can willingly happen in today’s society. Two characters that are miserably married oppose to those perfect fairy tale, Hollywood movies of true love and happily ever after’s. Dmitry Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna are prime examples that love doesn’t exist and instead affection and passion overpower love. After having a stable life, married and with kids these characters prove that its possible to feel attraction to another individual besides his or hers spouse.
In the early centuries, in a relationship men were the unfaithful ones in dating and also in a marriage, women didn’t have the equality in rights as a worthy person. “Men did not commit infidelity more than women, and no sex differences were found regarding the type of
The nineteenth century was a period in which marriage was viewed differently from the way it’s viewed today. Women didn’t have the same rights they have now, in fact they didn’t have any rights. Staying home and tending to the house, while the husbands went out and worked was a woman’s job. This period was filled with men whom held a sort of dominance over women which in turn prevented women from satisfying their own desires and ending up unhappy. In Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” she uses irony and symbolism to show how an unwanted marriage can deprive a woman of her happiness and independence during the nineteenth century. Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” put me in mind of an author named Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her short story “The Yellow