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Oppression In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

694 Words3 Pages

Around the late 1800’s and early 1900’s women’s role in society was drastically different than they are now. Women were expected to take care of the house, her husband if she had one, her children and anything other than factory labor. They had no control over their lives; everything was controlled by men. In “The Story of an Hour” (1894), Kate Chopin exemplifies the role, treatment, and conflict of a woman through the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard. Throughout the story, examples of oppression, happiness, and freedom are shown through the conflict of man v. man, self, and society.
Oppression is the prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control of something or someone. Kate Chopin depicts oppression of the protagonist Louise by her husband …show more content…

“There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.” The sense of illumination was like a spark of life that she was granted. Her sister insisted that she comes out of the room with the window because she was “making herself ill”, however Louise insisted she wasn’t, rather she was taking in her new found happiness. The battle of man v. self, Louise v Louise, is expressed through her fight to find her own …show more content…

A man was the highest role in society, owned everything and had rights to all property. Women too were considered property in that time period. Louise Mallard knew and felt the sense of being owned by man, her husband. After news of her husband dying, she was finally free. “What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” Louise’s forceful expression of her views about love was the reason she found comfort in being her husband’s “possession”. After he died, she was finally "free, free, free! … Free! Body and soul free!" The fight of man v. society, Louise v. the role of women, help shape her overzealous feeling of

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