Voices In The Dark As Depicted In The Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin

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The theme “voices in the dark” is very prevalent in “The Story of an Hour”. “Voices in the dark” refers to the voices and opinions of characters that are hidden because of society, the person they are, or the time period’s social limitations. The voices of many women and African-Americans were often hidden and limited because certain time periods gave no respect to them. They were looked down upon which caused some of them to either rebel or become mentally unstable. In “The Story of an Hour”, we are introduced to a woman named Louise Mallard who is going through similar setbacks. Louise has heart problems and is subtly told about the death of her husband. Suddenly, she is in a complete state of happiness because she finally realizes how much …show more content…

However, this makes Louise Mallard happy. When Louise is told about the death of her husband, she goes up to her room and starts seeing the brighter things in life. In the story it states, “But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought”(Chopin). This is Louise’s first reaction to her husband’s death. She looks out her window and starts to look into her future without her husband. She starts to look at life as beautiful as she finally gains some sense of independence and freedom. This short story was written in 1894, a period in time where women had very limited rights and were often oppressed by society and their husbands. Women were not encouraged to have an education or any type of career. Their job was to stay home and take care of children while their husbands went to work. Louise was one of the many victims of this time period who wanted nothing to do with that, but they were trapped. In fact, the author of this story Kate Chopin had to take over her husband’s business when he died. We can infer that Chopin is expressing her point of view through

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