A Respectable Woman Analysis

Kate Chopin demonstrates perfectly how women in the eighteen hundreds were treated and how they viewed life. Her writings did not try to change anything, rather just wanted to reflect on how life was for the typical woman through her stories such as “,Story of An Hour”, “Madame Célestin’s Divorce”, and “A Respectable Woman.” Throughout these stories we see how the common woman was facing sexual oppression and felt trapped in marriage. Chopin uses subtle symbolism and dialogue to represent these ideas. It is important to get a bit of historical context before we start analysing the stories individually and how they reflect the common woman in the eighteenth century. In 1873, Comstock Laws also known as “chastity” laws were passed which banned

The story begins with a woman complaining about her husband’s friend coming into town for two weeks, meaning that they cannot have sexual relations or “undisturbed tête-a-tête”(pg. 1) like she wanted, causing her to become sexually frustrated. Throughout the story, Mrs. Baroda The terrifying part of the story, however, is a fear most women encounter: becoming attracted to another man while married. In a 2001 study done by Thomas V. Hicks and Harold Leitenberg, it was found that 80% of women were known to have sexual fantasies about other men outside of their husbands. Factors that increased these fantasies were how well their marital life was going and long they had been married, Mrs. Baroda’s martial life seems to be the norm and mentions how they cannot have sexual relations while Gouvernail is visiting. This added fuel to how she views Gouvernail. Gouvernail is different from her husband, someone that she never experienced. It’s not that she doesn’t love her husband, however, she is just sexually bored and talking to Gouvernail adds a sense of excitement of

The story shows the forbidden pleasure every woman, especially in the 1800s, has: the pleasure of her husband dying. The main character, Louise, shows overwhelming joy at the thought of her husband being gone hinting that all marriages are sexually and emotionally oppressive. That marriage is a binding union that limits one’s personal freedom, even if the husband is kind. Louise can not name a specific way that her husband oppresses her, rather that the idea of marriage alone is what oppresses her. Additionally, Louise’s heart condition shows her ambivalence towards her marriage. The heart condition is mentioned in the beginning and something she always had, but if her heart was truly weak then why did it not stress her heart with pain and sorrow with news that her husband was dead? However, when she learned he was alive her heart was pained with the fact that her newly found freedom out of marriage was quickly being taken away. The heart condition emphasizes about how women truly feel oppressed by