Kate Chopin's Message

Three Messages From Story

Three messages from Kate Chopin's “Story of an Hour” May people experience death, and handle it in different ways. Many with grief or sorrow, but have you ever heard of anyone feeling relief or happiness? Women during this time period were taught to faint or overreact to make them appear weak and as if they needed a man to help guide them through life. In Story of an hour the woman is told she has a heart condition to make her appear weak. She is told that her husband was in a train crash and had died. With some irony in the story, she then learned the truth and she dies from shock. There are three messages in Kate Chopin’s Story of an Hour.

The idea of weakness in women is made fun of in Kate Chopin’s Story of an hour. Women were taught to faint to make them appear weak to men. This caused men to feel attracted knowing he would take care of a women such as this. It was to make men appear strong and show guidance, when in reality the women were all pretending. Kate Chopin makes fun of this idea by portraying the woman with a heart condition and by the woman's sorrow and storming off into her room to weep alone. To add a little humor and to add to the realization of women being strong, the woman repeats the phrase “I'm Free.”

While the woman sits weeping in her locked bedroom after hearing the news, Kate Chopin compared falling leaves on an autumn day to the tears and sorrow felt in the woman. As she began to smile and enjoy her freedoms, and think of all the new things she could do, Chopin spoke about the sun and warm air outside the window, to express the joy that was felt in the woman. As the woman went down the stairs after collecting her thoughts and emotions, her man walks through the door, where she then dies in an instant, comparing this to a breeze that sweeps over, such as the sorrow swept over her body causing her to fall