Comparing Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour And The Awakening

“And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul…the brave. The soul that dares and defies.” That is a quote of Kate Chopin, an American realistic author of short stories and novels such as “The Story of an Hour” and The Awakening. Chopin is now considered to have been a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century. Chopin lived most of her life during the Realistic period, 1865 through 1910, and wrote Realistic works. Realism is characterized as having characters that reflected their region, gender, class, and age, accurate representation of the middle class at the time, and defined by the author’s use of characterization in each character behaved, thought, acted, reacted, and just lived. All works of Realism are character driven and show a cross-section of American life that had not been portrayed before. Literary works such as The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour” are

After learning of her husband’s death, Louise Mallard confines herself in a room in her house and, “Into this [armchair] she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (Chopin 630). Louise’s “exhaustion” seems to compress her. By confining herself to one room, her tiredness is constricting her and “press[ing] down” on her soul. She cannot escape from this exhaustion or the terrible news about her husband. And able to enjoy some rights, as a widow. Ironically, a few moments later, “[Louise Mallard] collapse[s] of a heart attack when [her husband] walks through the door” (Hacket 83). After only an hour or so of freedom, Louise dies when she sees her presumably dead husband standing alive in their doorway. This reveals the cross-section of how women felt that they were not equal to men in “The Story of an