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Self-Identity And Freedom In The Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin

770 Words4 Pages

Self-Identity and Freedom The story of an hour by Kate Chopin introduces us to Mrs. Mallard as she reacts to her husband’s death. In this short story, Chopin portrays the complexity of Mrs. Mallard’s emotions as she is saddened yet joyful of her loss. Kate Chopin’s story argues that an individual discovers their self-identity only after being freed from confinement. The story also argues that freedom is a very powerful force that affects the mental or emotional state of a person. Chopin argues that only through death can one be finally freed. The author makes strong, yet subtle statements towards humanity and women’s rights. Through subtle symbolism, Kate Chopin demonstrates how marriage is more like a confining role of servitude rather than a …show more content…

Kate Chopin introduces her main character as “Mrs. Mallard” to signify her being married. However, within her marriage, she loses herself. Being married, she took her husband’s last name and became a wife. In a way it changed her personality. She was no longer her own self, she was someone else’s “property”. Her first name is only told after her husband dies. Thus, it symbolizes her being free, “Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering” (Chopin 203). The reader is told that Mr. Mallard is assumed to die from a railroad accident. The railroad has been used to symbolize a transition, moving on, and change. The death of Mr. Mallard would be a transition from Mrs. Mallard being some man’s wife to becoming her own person. After she is told the news about her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard goes upstairs and looks out the window. Out the

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The Contrast of The Story of an Hour While Mrs. Mallard is just starting a new life, so to say, for herself, her life she has known comes to an end. She is just able to become “free, free, free!” (57) when she loses her life. Kate Chopin uses contrast with the news Richard’s gave, the way Mrs. Mallard felt in the room and the doctor’s news to show how women perceived marriage in the 19th century in her story The Story of an Hour.

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Chopin also describes Mrs. Mallard as “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength”. At the beginning Mrs. Mallard is thought of as being controlled, and weak. In the 19th Century, when this story was written, husbands controlled their wives. Perhaps Mrs. Mallard wasn’t like most women of her time. After she hears of her husband’s death she morns for what feels like only a moment.

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“The face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.” This moment in “The Story of an Hour,” is relatable to Kate Chopin's own life. Though Kate loved her husband dearly, she was restricted from a lot of the things she wanted to pursue.

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Kate Chopin wrote a story about Mrs. Mallard, a married woman who suffers from heart problems and also has to cope with her husband recent passing. Mrs.Mallard, she showed sincere grief about her husband passing. However, looking back at how controlling her husband Mr.Mallard were in their marriage, Mrs.Mallard felt a sudden joy when processing her husband death After her sudden emotional change, Mrs Mallard felt liberated when she started thinking about what her life would be like without Mr.Mallard, but regardless of the happiness she feels, she knows that once she sees her husband in corpse that sadness will return. Through her writing, author Chopin readers/ audience would be women who feel trapped and controlled in their marriage. Anger, loneliness and heartbroken are feelings that women who're coping with the death of their loved one feel.

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Mrs. Baroda feels inner conflict with wanting to be with her husband’s friend, but also her duty as a woman in society. Within “A Story of an Hour” Mrs. Mallard faces a similar situation when she wants the freedom and autonomy from her husband. Through these works of Kate Chopin, the reader can see that the women protagonists face inner dispute, self-realization, and resolution with those feelings. In “A Respectable Woman” by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Baroda struggles with her desires of wanting to be free from her marriage, but she doesn’t want to break society’s role for her.

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Essay Comparing Story Of An Hour And The Boarding House

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While both stories are unique in their conflicts and resolutions, they each take place in a similar culture and hold a similar theme. In “Story of an Hour” the main conflict facing Mrs. Mallard is identified within the first sentence, “the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin, 32). At first, Mrs. Mallard, behaves how a reader would expect one to at the news of a loved ones passing. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment…” (33).

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Story Of An Hour Critical Analysis

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We think that the form of the “Imaginary” mentioned in Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of Mrs. Mallards family and friends “imagining” that the devastated new of Mr. Mallard’s death would cause her a heart attack, however later on in the story it was mentioned that she was in fact relieved to know she was a free woman of her marriage. Consequently, the reality of Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts, perceptions and feelings were not the same as others may have assumed or imagined to be. Based on stereotypical standards of society this was misunderstood because a wife should feel an enormous pain for the death of her husband. As the story continues, when Josephine whose Mrs. Mallard’s sister told her about the death of Mr. Mallard, instead of reacting in shock as “many women would’ve (Chopin, The Story of an Hour)” done so, Mrs. Mallard “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.

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Literary Criticism In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

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In the story, Chopin begins with the issue of female identity. The story, just like several other stories, begins with Mrs. Mallard being at home; two assumptions can be made, one she is married, and two, she is probably waiting for her husband to return home. What is particular about it, is how Chopin only mentions her name after she knows about her husband’s death and when is realizes that she is free. By doing this, the author criticizes the fact that women adopted her husband’s name in marriage as a signal of men’s property. This fact could mean that for a woman to recover her identity or freedom is by becoming a

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Kate Chopin was an independent woman even while being married to her husband she walked alone through the city of New Orleans, and she argued with others about politics and social problems which were also not normal for a woman to do around the 1880’s. Her husband later died and though she mourned his death she embraced this independence even more. Chopin wrote about the life and the people of Louisiana (since she moved there after her husband 's death) and focused most of her writings on love, marriage, women, and independence. In the short story “The Story of an Hour” Chopin introduces the themes of freedom/Independence, the oppressiveness of marriage, and mortality through these three themes Chopin depicts the struggle of women during the 1880’s.

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