What is the Ideal Marriage?
Although marriage should be an equally enjoyable partnership, for both husband and wife the story of an hour reflects the nineteenth century view that marriage is an oppressive relationship where women are the victims. Even in today’s society, with women rights, ladies are still in their husbands’ shadow. Husbands are the head of the house and bread winner. Wives are the housekeeper. Today even thought a wife have rights she is still her husband’s maid. However, marriage is starting to be a partnership when it comes to household chores and children.
Slavery is an appropriate term for marriage in the nineteenth century. Who was the slave in a marriage? Women, having no rights, were expected to be obedient to their husbands. If a wife was not obedient, her husband had the right to beat her. A husband had a right to beat his wife up until 1978. Wives were oppressed by their husbands. Even if a lady was fortunate to have a husband that did not beat her and treated her well, she still felt oppressed. According to the Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard’s husband, Brently Mallard, was a loving and kind husband. However, Mrs. Mallard still felt as though she was in slavery. She kept repeating the word free when she received the news that her husband died. Mrs. Mallard felt oppressed because in the story she said “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin, The Story of an Hour). Though Mrs. Mallard felt oppressed by Mr. Mallard she still loved him. After hearing of her husband’s death, “Ms. Mallard wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister arms” (Chopin, The Story of an Hour). Although the question will arise whether Mrs. Mallard really loved her husband or if she just was acting, the story states that...
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...eenth century a woman did not have a voice, Husbands are starting to realize that their wives do not have to take care of the household responsibilities and appreciate their wives. Marriage has changed since the nineteenth century however there is still a lot of changes that need to takes place.
Work Cited
Hoeflinger, Deborah. "A Brief History of Women in America." Power point found online. A Brief History of Women in America. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. Logan, IA: Perfection Learning, 1894. Print.
Muntone, Stephanie. "Women’s Rights in the 19th Century." N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. WIC - Women's History in America. McGraw-Hill Professional, 4 Feb. 2012. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.
"The Role of the Wife and Mother." Kate Chopin. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Mar. 2014.
http://www.loyno.edu/~kchopin/new/women/motherhood.html
I have read Kathryn Kish Sklar book, brief History with documents of "Women's Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870" with great interest and I have learned a lot. I share her fascination with the contours of nineteenth century women's rights movements, and their search for meaningful lessons we can draw from the past about American political culture today. I find their categories of so compelling, that when reading them, I frequently lost focus about women's rights movements history and became absorbed in their accounts of civic life.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. A Norton Critical Edition: Kate Chopin: The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. 3-109.
Davis, Sara de Saussure. "Kate Chopin." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 12 pp. 59-71. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group Databases. Central Lib. Fort Worth, TX. 11 Feb. 2003
“The Story of an Hour” and “The Hand” both has remarkable similarities and differences. They share a common theme of women and marriage and the sacrifices they make for their family. The setting in both stories is significant to understand the role of women hundreds of years ago. The symbolism portrayed in “The Hand” is about relationships and marriage. When a relationship is new and everything is wonderful there are not any fears or regrets. As time goes by even the most desirable qualities in someone will begin to be an annoyance rather than a joy.
In order to understand the concept of oppressive marriages, one needs to understand how the use of figurative language and literary devices give depth to the themes of the story. The most common literary devices found in the short story is symbolism. Symbolism “is the use of symbols to signify meanings that are different from their literal sense” (Merriam Webster) Common examples of symbolism include “open window” symbols which signifies new freedom found by the protagonist and “darkness” which can either signify great evil in a characters heart, sadness and disease or death. Furthermore, the most common figurative language is Irony. Irony “is a figure of speech in which words are used in such a way that their intended meaning is different from the actual meaning of the words. It can also be a situation that may end up in quite a different way than what is generally anticipated” (L...
The short story, “The Story of an Hour”, by Kate Chopin is about a woman who feels oppressed by her own marriage, which at the time, most women could relate to as they didn’t have much freedom around her time period. Chopin’s diction and imagery is seen throughout the story and shows us a little of what marriage for women was like at the time.
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
A patriarchal society suppressed the rights, freedoms and overall independence of women in the nineteenth-century. Due to this dominant male functioning of society, women's roles in society were reduced to basic domestic functions which in turn gave them little to no significance. The Story of An Hour illustrates this social behavior during that period. It gives a very realistic sense of what marriage was to the majority of the women during the period the author wrote the story. It portrays marriage as a form of prison for females.
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.
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
“The Story of an Hour” is a short story in which Kate Chopin, the Victorian writer; whose writing illustrates her life experience. Chopin presents an often unheard of view of marriage. During the 1800’s women had limited freedom, fewer rights and, were not considered equal to men. Chopin despise the oppressive nature of marriage, she had been a victim of this institution. Kate Chopin often used the original names of people who inspires her stories (Toth 10). In “The Story of an Hour” Mrs. Louise Mallard, Chopin’s main character, experiences the exhilaration of freedom rather than the desolation of loneliness after she learns of her husband’s death. In “The Story of an Hour” do you think her reaction says something about women’s lack of freedom at the time? Kate Chopin’s provides a powerful message using irony, conflict, and symbolism to show that in order to have a satisfying marriage, freedom is required for both partners.
“The Story of an Hour” is the story of Mrs. Louise Mallard who suffers of a weak heart. This being the first we know of Mr. Mallard, she is carefully being told that her husband had just passed away in a train accident. As every good wife should, Mrs. Mallard breaks out in grief. At first, the story goes, as it should. Then Mrs. Mallard goes into her room where she begins thinking, and her first thought is that she is free. Mrs. Mallard after years of being in an unhappy marriage is finally free to do what she wants, with no one to hold her back. Yet everything is against her, when she finally accepts that her life will begin now, her husband enters his home, unscathed and well, not having known that everyone thought him dead, a...
History of Women in the United States. 9 November 2005. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia Online. 15 November 2005 .
“The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin tells the fictional account of a woman who learns of her husband dying in a train crash and the ensuing hour after she is given that news. Within that hour, the protagonist Mrs. Mallard grieves over the loss of her husband, but also realizes a newfound freedom that she didn’t have being married. Chopin focuses on the theme of freedom, especially in terms of a woman’s role in marriage at the time the story was published (December 1894). In the short story “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin uses elements of the plot to evoke empathy and demonstrate how marriage affected a woman’s freedom in the late nineteenth century.
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.