Although these stories are dissimilar from each other, both show the struggle that women have against one or several antagonists in their lives. Chopin shows hardships through internal and external struggle within and family environment and within a personal environment. Whether the women depicted are escaping from their horrid lifestyle, or just plain escape from life, she is able to embody the hardships women face. Kate Chopin was a female writer whose radical viewpoints on life and sexism were not looked upon highly during her time period. In the late nineteenth century, she wrote and published her stories when it was custom for women to conduct themselves in a certain “womanly,” manner at all times.
One can image the struggles women went through during the nineteenth-century having no better option than to be married, widowed, or worse. As a result, Kate Chopin’s theme in “The Story of an hour” in the book Backpack Literature: An Introduction of Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing might have expressed one of many aspects that women struggled with during that time in an alternating, omniscient point of view. To put it lightly, marriage being one of those struggles in the story makes us think if marriage is not for everyone. Through the author’s diction, it will be clear that Mrs. Louise Mallard being the main character struggles with the antagonist, which is the institution of marriage, and she has a realization that she might have defeated the enemy and freed herself, but the institution being there in the end kills the protagonist. Knowing that Louise had a heart condition and then finding out her husband is dead.
According to Wan, the story of an hour is a true depiction of representation of women in the nineteenth century when movements against oppression of women began to emerge (170). Although the outcomes were not as tragic as depicted in the story, it was obviously a journey filled with many challenges, and the fact that a viable resolve is yet to be achieved to date shows the issue of gender equality is grim. In conclusion, “The story of an hour” is a clear depiction that women status in the society determines the choices they make about their lives. In this work, Chopin depicts a woman as a lesser being without identity or voices of their own. They are expected to remain in oppressive marriages and submit to their husbands without question.
Several women rose to battle patriarchy society. The main roles of the society during these times were political, productive, social, and reproductive. Most women were given the reproductive role, which limited them to staying at home to raise children, take care of the house, and to take care of their husbands. Susan Glaspell, a writer during the early 1900’s, lived during this time. Milton Levin states that Susan Glaspell’s distinction “lies in her motivation to explore increasingly difficult and complex problems” (178).
Is Bridget Jones a Feminist? Bridget Jones is the protagonist in Helen Fielding’s 1990 novel Bridget Jones’s Diary. Although this work is fiction, her life seems all too real for many women. The struggles Bridget faces are struggles many women continue to face today for instance, body image, intake of their many vices, being single in their thirties and dating in their thirties. The largest struggle she faces is an identity crisis, causing her position on all of her smaller struggles to be constantly changing.
The Victorian era was a time period in which women were seen and not heard, which made it hard for the publication of this book since it was about a woman that... ... middle of paper ... ...In the end, Edna feels like she is the real winner and that society has lost. It is possible that Chopin might have felt similar in writing such a controversial piece of literature and this was her way of living her dream through Edna. Chopin was an author that believed in herself and her writing shows that to her readers. This is a story that can relate to any age because it encompasses the human spirit and its inner desires.
Kenneth Eble states, “…She undertook to give the unsparing truth about women’s submerged life” (2). Speaking solely about Kate Chopin, this quote puts emphasis upon Chopin’s disputes with her society. She used her writing as a technique to indirectly explicate her life by the means of narrating her stories through the characters she created. Kate Chopin was one of the modern writers of her time, one who wrote novels concentrating on the common social matters related to women. Her time period consisted of other female authors that focused on the same central theme during the era: exposing the unfairness of the patriarchal society, and women’s search for selfhood, and their search for identity.
Through her use of diction and symbolism, Chopin was able to show the struggle of women against the backdrop of a patriarchal society. Her precise use of words allows her to convey the foreshadowing that helps the reader see past what Mrs. Mallard can see and understand the ending fully. This also allows her to give insight into how bright she saw that this new life could be. The symbolism helps to show the reader, deeply, the emotions that Mrs. Mallard was feeling and the norms pushed on women during the time. These literary devices come together to reveal the theme of the story.
Mallard, a housewife, seeking to obtain a freedom and self-identity that wasn’t offered to women of the nineteenth century. Within a short period she won her freedom and had a blissful outlook on life, until that freedom was snatched from her ultimately leading to her internal suicide. As the reader can infer, Mrs. Mallard 's actions were solely based on her abused rights, so anyone can emphasize and proudly support her. Living in that era was tough for all women due to the lack of women’s rights. Yet, today women have equal rights to men in most of the nation, including companies, politics, corporations, etc.
In the end she is thought of as a "new kind of female hero" (497). She has gone through many hardships and she "articulates her struggle to assert her womanhood" (497). Even with her lack of a higher education, she shows intelligence throughout her writing. She had her own way of getting her points across, one being that a person could not possibly fully understand the degradation of slavery if he/she did not go through it themselves. This is a point within itself because it further relays the fact that slavery was a very horrible, evil and degrading thing.