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Story Of An Hour Women

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“She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes”(Chopin 10). Mrs. Mallard finally experiencing the feeling of freedom can be seen as thrilling, overwhelming or even too good to be true. Freedom is something many of us do not have but we all long for. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” portrays the lack of freedom women had in the 19th century. The common role of a woman in the 19th century was to be a stay at home wife and also to tend to her working husband’s needs. Women in the 19th century barely had any freedom. They also had little control over their lives. Males were seen as the dominant gender as well as the superior gender during the 1800’s. …show more content…

In the 1800s divorces were uncommon. The men were in charge and owned everything. Mrs. Mallard, the main character of “The Story of an Hour” is a stay at home wife and is told terrible news from her sister about her husband’s passing. At first Mrs. Mallard is emotional about this news. It is clear to the readers that she loved her husband, but since her husband has passed, she longed for the freedom she never had before. After a while, Mrs. Mallard began to feel joyful because of her husband’s death. In this essay I will be analyzing this text through feminist lens. “The Story of an Hour” relates to gender roles, the lack of freedom and identity of women in the 1800s male-dominated society, and how the time period in which this story was written gives insight on why Mrs. Mallard feels the way she did when she finds out her husband has

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