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.”

In Kate Chopin's relates the woman's emotions to the outside nature in Story of an Hour.

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

lifeless.
Kate Chopin shows strong feminism in Story of an Hour. Feminism is an attack or critique of patriarchy that is not organic and shows women are equal with men. During the story, they showed the main character sobbing in her room upstairs, when suddenly she smiles. She realized her strength and freedom she would get back. Women were taught to be weak so a man would do things for them and protect them. At this point in the story, Chopin shows that women are in fact stronger then they are given credit and begins to point out what the woman could do now that she is in fact a widow, meaning she is not controlled over by a man. Towards the end, she pops back into reality and shows the women, back in her weakness, fainting from shock the man is back.
Clearly, there are three strong messages in Kate Chopin’s Story of an Hour. Kate Chopin was very clever in her writing and I personally loved this story. The woman's emotions go back and forth such as playing with the idea of hormones, where she is sad, happy, and then in shock but possibly back to sad at the moment she dies. Chopin, had a good way to express her view on feminism and also was clever in the way she showed a woman's strength when not one was looking, and she was free to feel what she wanted.