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Comparing Desiree's Baby And The Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin

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Kate Chopin is an American writer known for her deception of impacts, the restricted view of the nineteenth-century society, had on women. At that time, people were very restrictive about the perspective of a women’s place in the society. Women did not have a voice of their own. They were trained to believe that the goal of their life is to serve their husband. In the stories “Desiree’s Baby” and “The Story of an Hour” Chopin has portrayed how this condition of the society affected women and their view about marriage and life.
In the story “Desiree’s Baby,” Kate vividly shows how the racial and class-based prejudice prevalent in the society affects the protagonist, Desiree. As noted by Howard, Desiree is in a society where “Marriage was the goal of every woman’s life, service to her husband and her children her duties, passionless submission she assumed virtues, selflessness her daily practice, self-sacrifice her pleasure.” Desiree is shown to have no desire and identity of her own. She views life as being a good wife and serving her husband. She depends on her husband, Armand, for almost …show more content…

In the story, the protagonist Louise Mallard suffers from a heart problem which to an extent shows how much she is oppressed in her marriage. Unlike Desiree, her heart is not in the marriage. She takes marriage as a confinement and a battle of will between husband and wife. She is not satisfied with the limitations that are imposed upon her being a wife. She thinks that the end of the obligations of marriage will free her and she can follow her own desires. Hence, when she hears the news of her husband’s demise, she senses a moment of rapturous delight at the prospects of freedom in her remaining life. “She saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (Chopin.

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