Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" and the Roles of Women

Kate Chopin, a female writer in the 1800's writes stories of women in various states of independence from males. She can be viewed as a writer of the beginning of women's rights although she does not declare herself a feminist by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, an interview on the PBS website for Kate Chopin says,

"I think she was much more interested in the excitement, the civilization that came in her circle of intellectual friends. That was freedom, the freedom to explore ideas. Kate was neither a feminist nor a suffragist, she said so. She was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously. She never doubted women's ability to be strong. She came from a long line of strong women whom she loved and respected, the great-grandmother, grandmother, mother affiliation. She had strong women friends including intellectual women. Her lack of interest in feminism and suffrage did not have to do with a lack of confidence in women nor did it have a lack to do with a lack of any desire for freedom. She simply had a different understanding of freedom. She saw freedom as much more a matter of spirit, soul, character of living your life within the constraints that the world makes [or] your God offers you, because all of us do live within constraints. There's no indication that for example she regretted her marriage, or regretted being a mother" (pbs).

She was known instead as a Southern regionalist writer. "The Story of an Hour" was published by Vogue magazine in 1884, but was initially rejected by both Vogue and Century Magazines. The story was published after her Bayou Folk gave her international fame. This story was then rather rediscovered in the 1960s with the rise of feminism and has been used as a feminist story, or at least one that talks of roles of women inside marriage.

"The Story of an Hour" fits with this theme of freedom very well. In this story, a woman named Mrs. Mallard believes her husband to be dead, and at first, is very sad. Then, as her independence sinks in, she is elated with the idea of her newfound freedom. At last, she discovers that her husband has not died and she is so surprised that she dies of heart disease. Mrs. Mallard runs through the gamut of emotions and psychological states in this story. In "The Story of an Hour", Kate Chopin's shows how the death of a woman's husband brings inward joy, incorrect expectation, and ultimately death.

At first when Mrs. Mallard finds out that her husband has died, she is sad but differently sad than other women would have been. "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms" (Chopin). The use of the word "not" in this sentence tells the reader everything about the way women were expected to react to news such as this. In other words, she accepted the news at once, and was immediately overcome with grief for her beloved husband. She does not just sit there paralyzed by how her life will be over without him. However, immediately after she goes to her room alone to be at once with her thoughts. She sinks into a comfortable chair and is haunted by her horrible news.

This is where Mrs. Mallard becomes filled with an inner joy slowly. She looks out her window and sees the "open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life" (Chopin). The chair was facing the open window showing the reader that she had sat there many times before, maybe longing for a life she could not have, seeing all the possibilities in life out before her. Seeing all of this begins to put her in a different frame of mind to appreciate her newfound freedom. She smells rain in the air. She hears a peddler crying his wares below. She hears someone singing along with the sparrows twittering. In other words, she hears the sounds of life all around her. She smells the scent of a fresh start where the rain washes everything clean. She begins to imagine herself in her new beginning as though her very life is washed clean by the rain. She sees the blue sky through the clouds, just as she sees her future life through the tragedy of today. She sits there longer and a lone sob tries to escape her throat. She stares ahead as if in a kind of trance, but "It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought" (Chopin). In other words, Mrs. Mallard is not looking back, reflecting on her life with her husband. She is, on the other hand, just not thinking at all.

She is incorrect in the expectation that is coming to her slowly. "There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully" (Chopin). She tries to push back these new thoughts but is unable to. In all the scents and sounds of aliveness and life, she is beginning to anticipate her life alone. Of course, she is anticipating incorrectly, because she will find out later that her husband is not dead after all. However, at this point, "When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" (Chopin). She anticipates her own freedom as much as she tries to stop the thoughts. Blood begins to course through her body as she just begins to realize the unlimited choices in her new life. Just like the bustling peddler and wildlife outside her window, she herself is coming alive again in the knowledge of possibility. She is able to see beyond her grief that she knows will envelop her again. "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" (Chopin). She sees beyond the tragedy of the moment to the years ahead of her. And rather than dreading them or fearing them, she opens her arms to them. Mrs. Mallard is being filled with an inner joy however incorrect she is.

This inner joy takes over as she begins contemplating the rest of her life. "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" (Chopin). Mrs. Mallard and Kate Chopin, far ahead of their time, make a statement about marriage and the relationships between men and women and the nature of marriage itself. Not that Mrs. Mallard did not love her husband but that the institution of marriage itself made women subservient and men too, to some extent. "What did it matter! 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!" (Chopin). This statement really summarizes it all. Love cannot even count when the idea of being alone is compared. Not having to follow anyone's prescribed plan in life or have to try to make anyone follow hers fills her with newfound glee of sorts. "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering" (Chopin). Tying back to the quote from the introduction, Mrs. Mallard realizes that body and soul are tied together and that she is completely free. "Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long" (Chopin). It seems as though Mrs. Mallard does not love her husband to some, but that is clearly not the case. She just realizes how much better life could be if she could only live for herself and only herself.

However, all of this anticipation is for naught and she is incorrect in all her assumptions. This newfound knowledge ultimately and ironically leads to her death. Her sister brings her downstairs and her husband opens the door. Mrs. Mallard is so thoroughly shocked that she dies of a heart attack right in front of her husband. Of course, had she not had this brief moment of true illumination about her life and her role, she would not have died of surprise. The men, of course believe that she died because she was so happy to see her husband-of "the joy that kills" (Chopin). As says in his essay, "That they have the last word reinforces the fact that men dictate the circumstances of Louise's life and of her death as well" (Feminist Reading). Interestingly enough, when her sister comes to lead her out of her room is the only time in which her name is used.

"In addition to claiming her sexual desires, Louise also claims her own name. When the story begins, the narrator introduces her as Mrs. Mallard. Thereafter, the narrator refers to her only with pronouns, until she seems to have completely grasped the meaning of her new life. Then, the narrator reveals Louise's first name through her sister. However, her sister only uses the name twice before the narrator reverts back to the pronouns, as if to reveal that her freedom will not last long" (Cherry).

This tells us much about Mrs. Mallard and the various states of emotion she goes through. Her incorrect expectation is that her freedom will last.

Mrs. Mallard goes through all the possible emotions in this story-inward joy, incorrect expectation and death. And the story does say much about marriage and relationships as Mary Papke points out in Verging on the Abyss. "Each did, however, produce what one might call, for want of a better term, female moral art in works that focus relentlessly on the dialectics of social relations and the position of women therein (Papke 2). In other words, Mrs. Mallard is seen as a woman who has much to say about the place of women in relationships and out of relationships. Papke further points out on BookRag, ....' "The Story of an Hour," for instance, details a very ordinary reality and conscientiously analyzes that moment in a woman's life when the boundaries of the accepted everyday world are suddenly shattered and the process of self-consciousness begins" (Papke). Mrs. Mallard begins to think about her life in a whole new way, one that was previously closed to her because of her marriage. She begins to imagine what her life could be. This completely sums up the various experiences of Mrs. Mallard from grief to inward joy to incorrect expectation of freedom, and finally death.

Works Cited

Cherry, Dr.Caroline, Female Search for Identity and Voice in Kate

Chopin's A Vocation and a Voice. April 3, 2003. Retrieved July 29,

2007 at

http://www.eastern.edu/academic/trad_undg/sas/depts/english/Ob er%20thesis.htm

Chopin, Kate, "Story of an Hour," Retrieved July 29, 2007 at

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/storyofhour.html

Kate Chopin Re-awakening. Interviews. Retrieved July 29, 2007 at

http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/interviews.html

Kate Chopin's Story of an Hour: A Feminist Reading.

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/criticaldefine/femessay.pdf

Papke, Mary E. Retrieved July 29, 2007, at

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-storyanhour/essay2.html

Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin

and Edith Wharton (Contributions in Women's Studies). Greenwood

Press, September 21, 1990. Retrieved July 29, 2007 at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0313268770/ref=sib_dp_pop_ ex/104-6903279-8092727?ie=UTF8&p=S00H#reader-link