Feminist Relationship In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Kate Chopin is a feminist author who lived from 1850 to 1904, but she did not start her career until the death of her husband. Kate Chopin pieces of work focused on the females going against societal norms and taking charge of their own life. The Story of an Hour explores the thought process of a newly widowed wife as she begins to understand the full consequences of her husband's death, which means a new found freedom, but she has it taken away in the end. The Story of an Hour is a feminist response to the confines of marriage because it challenges the unequal power relations between husband and wife. I will be discussing the concepts of identity, free will, and material possession that appear in the Story of an Hour. Marriage begins with a vow between a man and a women; where it is promised by both that they will stick together until death separates them. the reality of marriage is that the women is forced to adopt the surname of her husband, live under his roof and move if his career demands it, therefore becoming an extension of her husband's identity, rather than have her own. The introduction of every character in the Story of an Hour includes their first name except our protagonist, who is introduced as Mrs. Mallard. This is important because a first name is an identifying characteristic of an

Mallard is described as having wrinkles that “bespoke repression” to show that her voice and free will has been repressed in marriage. When Chopin wrote The Story of an Hour females had few career opportunities, and lacked the ability to vote, so Mrs. Mallard is used as an archetype of the voiceless women in marriage and society. The argument put forward shows that it is wrong that females must be without the “possession of self assertion” in marriage and life instead they should be on equal footing with males. Chopin uses the setting in the Story of an Hour to further display the power dynamics because the housewife is merely a guest in her husband’s