Feminism In Kate Chopin's Of An Hour

1636 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The Role Of Women In Kate Chopins The Story Of An Hour

Feminism
Today women have more rights and are treated differently than before. Society back then didn 't see how valuable women were. They didn 't see that women are capable of many things. They have suffered the most and always will. Men should give women their space and freedom. Feminism fights for equality between men and women, in the short story “Of An Hour’’ the main character fails to meet her expectations and how feminist is today 's changed. Certainly, feminism has always been a dilemma in the society . “A lack of economic opportunities , and the absence of voice is one of them”(The Women 's Rights movement 1). Before no one believed in women as being something else. They would just see them as a housewife , they would have them …show more content…

Mallard supposed to be with her husband by his side and giving him advice she was not. This also lead to the news that they gave her husband had died and she was happy , she felt free. Her sister thought Mrs Mallard was crying in her room or very sad but she was not. “She said it over and over under her breath: Free, Free, Free!”(Kate Chopin 's View on Death And Freedom in the story Of An Hour,1).This was unexpected and weird in many ways . It was expected that Mrs Mallard was going to react differently as she really did. This means that maybe the years she was with her husband she was going to get attached to him but she was not . “Her sister Josephine,reminded us of her conventional thought that women should attach themselves to their husbands”(Kate Chopin 's View on Death and Freedom in the story Of An Hour,1). After that Mrs Mallard wanted her time alone in the room nobody actually knew how she felt in reality. She had a conflict in her life. Mrs. Mallard had her own experiences and thoughts. Love , freedom, and marriage were her things. Maybe she was suffering and she stuck in her mind those ideas and felty all the peace she wanted. She was not really conscious it was between her world and the actual real world she had to face. This leads to her feelings sometimes she wouldn 't love her husband , and sometimes she would and it was all mixed up into different feelings and emotions. When she saw her husband in the door she cried , but it was of happiness not sadness and it was a rare death. We as readers consider that seeing her husband shocked her and anguish when she sees her husband. The doctor eventually said a different thing that the joy killed Mrs. Mallard .” The conflict between Mrs. Mallard’s life and death becomes so irreconcilable that she finally dies of heart disease when she is told that she will see her husband come home alive instead of death in the railroad disaster.”(Kate

Show More
Related

  • Unveiling Mrs. Mallard's Paradox: Freedom in Death

    1407 Words  | 3 Pages

    Like in many tragically true stories, it would seem Mrs. Mallard 's freedom came too late. Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour” begins by introducing Mrs. Mallard as a person afflicted with heart trouble. The story builds on this by having Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine and her husband Richard explain the situation in a very sensitive manner. Their efforts would prove to be in vain however as Mrs. Mallard then proceeds to emotionally break down. The news shocks Mrs. Mallard to her very core and has her at odds with how she should feel now that all was said and done. After coming to terms with her situation, fate delivers its final blow in a cruel and deceitful ploy towards Mrs. Mallards. And with that, Mrs. Mallard 's dies. In her hour of change Mrs. Mallard 's was delicate, thoughtful and excitable.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Kate Chopin's Literary Work

    1604 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Gender is constructed in individual, interactional, and structural ways to create environmental constraints and opportunities that usually benefit men more than women. Gender does not, however, affect families' lives in isolation” (Blackstone 335). So, do gender roles affect everyday people? The literary and art movement? Both of these questions have a simple answer, yes. What scholars and erudites have a hard time answering is why. Maybe because there is no reason why, or society should not question the motive behind gender roles.

    Read More

  • Kate Chopin and How the Feminist Movement Inspired Her Writings

    1650 Words  | 4 Pages

    Kate Chopin and How the Feminist Movement Inspired Her Writings. Kate Chopin was an American author who wrote novels as well as short stories. Her work was extraordinary and some of her greatest work was based on the feminist movement. Kate Chopin became known throughout the world as one of the most influential writers during the feminist movement. She has attracted great attention from scholars along with students, and her work has been translated into many different languages.

    Read More

  • Marriage And A Woman's Role In The 1800s

    659 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mrs. Mallard is the example of a typical housewife of the mid 1800’s. At the time, most women were not allowed to go to school and were usually anticipated to marry and do housework. During that time, the only way women could get out of a marriage was if they were to die or their husbands was to die. In that time period, the husband had control of all of the money, so it would not be wise if the wife were to leave the financial freedom that was provided by the husband. This is most likely why Mrs. Mallard never leaves her husband’s death, she is sad at first but then experiences an overwhelming sense of joy. This shows that she is not in a fulfilling marriage as his death means she will finally have own individual freedom, as well as financial freedom being the grieving widow who will inherit her husband’s wealth. In the words of Lawrence I. Berkove he states, “On the other hand, Chopin did not regard marriage as a state of pure and unbroken bliss, but on the other, she could not intelligently believe that it was desirable, healthy, or even possible for anyone to live as Louise, in the grip of her feverish delusion, wishes: to be absolutely free and to live totally and solely for oneself.” (3) Mrs. Mallard’s reaction to her husband’s death is Chopin’s way of expressin...

    Read More

  • Womanhood In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    682 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Awakening is the probably best-known novel by Kate Chopin. It addresses various issues like the differences between Creole and American upper class culture, the role of art, and prominently the role of women. In pre-Civil War North America amongst black antebellum slaves and white payed industrial slaves, all over the country women were limited to certain roles, rituals and realms and could therefore be seen as a third kind of enslaved group by society. Women were seen as “angels of the household” and depended mostly on their husbands in financial matters and as heads of the family. The patriarchal order was predominant. In Kate Chopin’s novel the development of Edna Pontellier is used to depict the emancipation of the woman from an object,

    Read More

  • Feminism And Criticism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kate Chopin’s short novel, The Awakening, was published in 1899, five years before her death. The Awakening follows Edna Pontellier as she navigates through the summer and fall of her twenty-eighth year. She learns to swim, engages in two extramarital affairs, moves out of her husband’s house, and, upon hearing of her lover, Robert’s rejection, she drowns herself. For over fifty years, The Awakening has been heralded as a deeply feminist text. Chopin destabilizes traditional family values and puts a woman in a position of sexual power and quasi-liberation. The feminism of this text is complicated by Edna’s final action. Edna’s inability to continue living after being rejected by Robert would indicate a feminine dependence on a masculine figure,

    Read More

  • Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour and Feminism in the 1800s

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, feminism is defined as the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism is a major part of the short story, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, which is a story that portrays women’s lack of freedom in the1800s. Women had no rights, and had to cater to all of their husband’s needs. The main character in “The Story of an Hour” is a woman who suffers from heart trouble, named Mrs. Mallard. When Mrs. Mallard was told about her husband’s death, she was initially emotional, but because of her husband’s death she reaped freedom and became swept away with joy. The story is ironic because Mrs. Mallard learns her husband was not dead, and instead of exulting her husband’s sudden return she regretted abandoning her moment of freedom. An analysis of “The Story if an Hour” through the historical and feminist lenses, suggests that the story is really about women’s self-identity in the 1800s male-dominated society, and how it caused women’s lack of freedom.

    Read More

  • Feminine Self-Assertion In The Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    Xuding Wang writes in her essay, Feminine Self-Assertion in “The Story of an Hour”, a strong defense for Kate Chopin’s classic work, “The Story of an Hour”. Wang provides powerful proof that one of the pioneering feminist writers had a genuine desire to push the issue of feminine inequality. Even decades later, Xuding Wang fights for the same ground as Kate Chopin before her. She focuses on critic Lawrence I. Berkove, who challenges that Louise Mallard is delusional with her personal feelings of freedom once she discovers the news that her husband has passed away. The story opens with the line “Knowing Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble” (Chopin). [1] Chopin uses allegory to describe

    Read More

  • Story Of An Hour Analysis Essay

    651 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    1026 Words  | 3 Pages

    A man cooks and it’s considered surprising to some people, but when a woman cooks it’s her obligation. Back in the old days, gender roles were enforced and were consider to be traditional in societies. Certainly, in the novel “The Awakening” the narrator creates many scenarios of traditional and inequality within gender roles. The narrator used the scenarios to show the standard gender roles in a Creole society. In “The Awakening” Katherine Chopin suggests that the expectations on gender roles limit and create barriers to an individual’s choice.

    Read More

  • Women In Mrs. Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “The Story of an Hour”, she is a young white woman. “She was young, with a fair, calm ace, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength (Chopin 246). Mrs. Mallard has a sister named Josephine and they know my Mallard is sick from her heart, so they don’t know how to break it to her that her husband died. “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break it to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin 245). She describes how she feels that’s he’s there is a curse coming to her through the window. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it fearfully” (Chopin 246). She took the death of her husband really hard, but that person was her life.

    Read More

  • Three Readers Response to The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

    1192 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.

    Read More

  • Oppression In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

    649 Words  | 2 Pages

    The main theme in “The Story of an Hour” is a woman’s freedom from oppression. Mrs. Mallard does not react accordingly to the news of her husband’s death; in the third paragraph it states, “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment.” After her initial wave of shock and sadness has passed, however, she becomes elated with the thought of finally being free of her husband. Originally, she is described as being “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body” and having lines that “bespoke repression”; in an attempt to be a perfect wife to a man whom she did not even love, Mrs. Mallard has been masking her true self. Once she realizes that she has finally gained the freedom that she has been longing for, Mrs. Mallard begins to

    Read More

  • Oppression In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

    545 Words  | 2 Pages

    Oppression is characterized as the exercise of authority and power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. People who are oppressed by somebody can begin to develop hate for that individual. As told, a great example of oppression was Hitler and his armed force towards the Jews in the holocaust. This kind of direct can likewise be shown in the family, particularly in the late eighteen hundreds and mid nineteen hundreds, amongst man and spouse, with the man being the one in control. The short story, "The Story of An Hour," by Kate Chopin, written in 1894, is a demonstration of oppression towards Mrs.Mallard and it is being shown in her behavior, health and her dialogue.

    Read More

  • Feminism And Gender Difference In Kat Kate Chopin's Story Of An Hour

    1348 Words  | 3 Pages

    Feminism and gender difference contribute a major role in the works of authors from the 18th and 19th century. During that point in history, women were essentially treated as second class citizens without the ability to do anything less they faced judgement and ostracization from members of society. Women were not allowed to vote, own property nor be accepted into prominent leading positions. Instead, many were required to stay in the home and care for the family. Women lacked the freedom and independence they not only wanted but needed due to a society run patriarchal views that hindered the growth of women. Women were tied down to marriage and childbearing with the expectation of blindly following their husband without challenging their authority.

    Read More

More about Feminism In Kate Chopin's Of An Hour

Open Document