Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Kate Chopin, actual birth name Katherine O'Flaherty, was an author in America of novels and short stories. The female author was born on February 8, 1850, and passed away August 22, 1904. Chopin then started writing stories in 1892 to 1895 for both children and adults. She is now considered to be one of the first feminist authors of the 20th century.

In order to understand Kate Chopin’s reasoning for writing the many variations of women in her stories, one must learn what The Sacred Heart Academy in St. Louis. She was sent to the school when she was about five and a half years old. The nuns at the Sacred Heart Academy were known for their intelligence. Two months after Chopin had attended the school her father ended up being killed while riding

on a train which while crossing a bridge had collapsed.

Some thought of this dramatic incidence being as a resemblance in her short story “The Story of an Hour”. The story states that Mr. Mallard was falsely assumed dead due to a railroad accident. Kate Chopin then ended up living with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother that was all widowed. Living in a household full of strong independent women had a strong impact on her upbringing. Chopin had a long line of independent women in her family going back to her great-great grandmother, which had been the first woman to obtain legal separation from her husband in St. Louis. After her great-great-grandmother had gotten legally separated she had raised her five children while running a shipping business near the Mississippi. When Kate Chopin turned twenty years old she ended up getting married to Oscar Chopin. In every way possible he loved his wife, he actually admired her intelligence and independence, and “allowed” Kate Chopin’s unheard of freedom. Oscar later died of swamp fever in 1882, leaving Kate to be a widow to her four children, two girls and two boys. To help support herself and

her children Kate Chopin began to write short stories about people that she had known from Louisiana. The short story “The Awakening” was said to be inspired by a true story of a woman in New Orleans. Her first novel was published in 1890 called “At Fault”. Once Kate Chopin had passed away she had finished around one hundred short stories and two novels.
One of Kate Chopin famous stories “The story of an Hour” can be viewed as simple, yet complicated; it has also been viewed as ranging from naïve to very sophisticated.

The way most readers who have read Chopin stories end up coming to the conclusion that she was a feminist writer, yet she had never intended to become known as such. Kate Chopin’s stories describe three different types of women being the "feminine," the "emancipated," and the "modern". The intentions of Chopin were never to try and fight for the equality of women and men, but more as an insight of the struggle that women had to face emotionally within their relationships, or marriages. The main character in “The Story of an Hour” was Mrs. Mallard who had conflicted emotions toward her husband that became clearer after hearing about her husband’s mistaken death. The conflicts of emotions that Mrs. Mallard faces explains how women in that time, more of a traditional era, could have viewed their own relationships. This story along with others that Chopin had written had then brought up much controversy of whether or not her novels and stories should even be published. Another story that Chopin wrote “The Storm” describes another emotional conflict that Calixta had faced with her husband. Calixta was a loving wife who had an affair with Alcee while her husband and son had left the house and got trapped during the storm in town. This story was another story that had brought up controversy due to during that time

it was unthought-of for a woman to be promiscuous. Due to “The Storm” being a story of sexuality and infidelity, a topic not publicly discussed in 1898, the story ended up not being published in Chopin’s lifetime. The short story “The Storm” ended up being a sequel to Chopin's “At the Cadian Ball”. Chopin begins to explain Calixta and Alcee’s relationship more in detail and how it had begun. The story then further explains how Calixta ends up with her husband Bobinot who she settles for and not really attracted to; which, helps to explain the reasoning for Calixta’s affair.