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Marriage In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

881 Words4 Pages

In serious literary works of fiction, or as it is also called non-formula fiction, the storyline is unpredictable. This unpredictability makes readers question certain aspects of society because the results or conclusion of the story is not what is widely accepted or expected to happen. The theme or moral of the story is not stated outright and the reader must discern the theme for themselves. In the short story, The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, the theme is that marriage, even to a good man, in some form limits, restricts, and suffocates women’s lives. The theme is made evident when considering the background of the author as well as the wording used in the story. When examining what the theme of a story could be, it is important to consider the background of the person who wrote it. Kate Chopin lived from 1851 to 1904. It is important to understand this because the Women’s Rights Movement is said to have officially begun on July 13, 1848. This means that Chopin would have grown up during the time when women were beginning to fight for their rights and this would have no doubt had a profound impact on her life. She got married at age nineteen and had six kids and while she had always considered a literary career, she only started seriously writing after her husband died in 1883. This story may suggest that while Chopin may have loved her husband and was upset about his death, she may have also felt that he was a restrictive force on her writing. This may have

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