When reading Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, one can see how much society has changed over time. These stories are set in the late nineteenth-century and show how society affected how they were treated from their perspective. Chopin and Gilman brought the characters into an isolated setting to show readers what they realized they wanted was to be free. Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” and John’s wife, the unnamed narrator, from “The Yellow Wallpaper” were never given the opportunity to speak up against anything in life. Mrs. Mallard realized that she was finally free from her marriage when her husband died. It took a few minutes of her being by herself for her to realize that this horrific event would end up giving her life back to her and allowing her to live how she wanted to. When John’s wife became ill, she did not get to choose the treatment that she wanted. Her husband locked her in a room where the windows had bars, and the bed had been bolted to the floor (Gilman 318), thinking the isolation would help her. What …show more content…
Mallard was not happy for some time, and Chopin tells us that, “…she had loved him- sometimes. Often she had not” (Chopin 288). Mrs. Mallard was trapped in a marriage that she was no longer happy in, and she had no way of leaving. If she would have left she would have nothing and would have been looked down upon by others. When she learns that her husband had died, she locked herself away in her bedroom to think and process what this meant for her (Chopin 287). She became excited thinking about how she no longer had to do what her husband wanted her to. Mrs. Mallard suffered from a heart attack at the end of the story after realizing that her husband was not actually dead (Chopin 289). Her heart attack was caused by the disappointment of her husband being alive and the freedom from her marriage she had lost as a